Keyboard on laptop is not working- What can be the main causes of your problem and solutions?

You are working normally on your laptop with all the feedback and deadlines to handle, suddenly some of the keys stop functioning, or worse, the whole keyboard on the laptop is not working and takes forever to respond. While it can be the worst situation that you have ever faced with your laptop, we will give you a fews tips you can try for yourself to get the keyboard back to the proper working status.

These tips are very simple, easy and fast to do. You can try them at home whenever a problem occurs. But before showing you the solutions, let’s take a careful look at all the possible reasons that could be the main cause of the issue. By doing that, we can avoid the similar troubles in the future.

There are several reasons why your laptop keyboard stops working:

• Problem with the high temperature
• Problem with dirt and dust
• Problem with bad connection
• Problem with the regional settings
• Problems with hardware drives

Step 1: Restart the system

Whenever you’re having a PC problem, not just with the keyboard, this is the first thing to try before doing any troubleshoot on the laptop. By restarting the machine, you may help it recover from the issue in a fast, easy and very simple way and actually solve the problem anytime.

Don’t forget to save all of your undone work before starting the laptop.

Step 2: Check for any physical damages, temperature (too cold or hot) and its cleanliness

Any physical damage on your laptop in general and the keyboard itself will affect the normal working status of your keyboard. If it is still not working after restarting, do the thorough check on your keyboard to see if there’s any key stuck, broken or has been installed in an inappropriate way in its position or not. If there is a key getting damaged, you can jump down to the “Replace the keyboard” tips below or bring your laptop to the support center for help. If everything is fine, we will go to the next steps, checking on the temperature.

Every laptop is designed with an internal protection system. It protects itself by shutting down once the system is overheated. Until the machine gets back to its normal temperature, it will not turn on as you power it up. To solve this, you have to wait for it to cool down.

Checking on the cleanliness: Do not try to loosen, remove the keys or remove the trapped dirt beneath the keyboard by physically pushing, shaking or tapping on the machine by force, which will do even more damage to the keyboard than actually fix it. Instead, you can try cleaning the keyboard with following tips:

Shut down the computer and unplug it from all the devices.

Carefully turn the laptop upside down with the screen open.

Gently tapping the bottom of the computer for the trapped dirt and dust to fall out.

Run your hand or a dry clean brush over the keys and carefully shake the laptop in different directions possible. Make sure to remove all the inside dust.

With any dirt and dust that you cannot get rid of, a compressed air device or a specialized keyboard cleaning kit will be good choices to go with. Do not remove the dirt by blow on it, you may push them deeper into the machine and put your computer in even worse trouble.

Step 3: Replace the keyboard

If you find any physical damage, signs of being broken, missing keys, inappropriate key positions, losing or rattling components, you know it is time to replace your keyboard immediately. You can actually replace the keyboard by yourself if you have done it before, there are tutorials on the internet on how to safely remove your broken keyboard and replace it with a new one.

But if it is the first time doing it, without the right tools, appropriate touch or professional methods, you can do more damage to the computer.

Step 4: Check if the keyboard works in BIOS

Powering up or restarting your computer, and while the machine is turning on, press the Esc or Del keys to open the BIOS menu. If you can finely open the BIOS menu and use the arrow keys to navigate around, then the problem can be confirmed that it is the software issue, not the hardware.

Step 5: Update/ Reset keyboard setting/ Reinstall keyboard driver

If your laptop keyboard isn’t working, the first step is to update the driver.

1. Click Start and look for the Device Manager from the Main Menu
2. In the list of devices, look for Keyboards and click to expand the list.
3. Look for your laptop keyboard in that list and right-click on your keyboard device.
4. Select Properties > Driver.
5. Click “Update Driver” and wait for Windows to scan for a new or updated driver.
6. Windows will install a suitable driver for your system as soon as it finds one.

Step 6: The next thing you need to do is to test the keyboard with a word processor and see if it works after the update. If it is not working still then choose Uninstall Device and Windows will remove the driver from your computer.

If your keyboard is still not working at the moment, you can also use Action > Scan for hardware changes to force Windows to install the driver.

• Run keyboard Troubleshoot
• Disable all the Filter keys

Filter keys basically will ignore repeated keystrokes to make typing easier for those people who have hand tremors. However, it can sometimes make normal or fast typing into trouble. Therefore, whenever you have a problem with your keyboard, trying to disable the Filter keys can solve the issue.

If your laptop is using Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10, you can try disable the filter with the following method.

Windows 7

1. Open Start menu -> Control Panel.
2. Click Ease of Access Center -> Make the keyboard easier to use.
3. Uncheck Turn on Filter Keys then OK to turn off.

Windows 8, 8.1 and 10

1. Open Ease of Access Center. In Windows 8 and 8.1: press shortcut keys > Windows + U.
2. With Windows 10: open Start menu, click Settings -> Ease of Access.
3. Click Make the keyboard easier to use (or Keyboard, toggle Use Filter Keys).
4. Uncheck Turn on Filter Keys then OK to turn off.

Step 7: Change the regional setting

When you find some keys are not working properly or do not respond to your action, it is probably because of the different regional status that your computer is in. By changing it to your region or the language, in another word, that you are using/typing, you can solve the problem.

To change regional settings, follow the steps described for your computer's operating system.

In Windows 10   

• Click Start then click Control Panel, or Press Windows + I.
• Select Change date, time, or number formats > The Region dialog box appears.
• On the Formats tab, select the format you want to change from the drop-down list. Now choose Additional Settings > The Customize Format dialog box appears.
• Click the tab that contains the settings that you want to modify, and make your changes. Ex: to change part or all of a number format, click the Numbers tab and change the setting that you want.

In Windows 7   

• Click Start then click Control Panel, or Press Windows + I.
• Choose Clock, Language, and Region, then select Regional and Language Options > The Regional and Language Options dialog box appears.
• On the Formats tab, under Current format, click Customize this format > The Customize Regional Options dialog box appears.
• Click the tab that contains the settings that you want to modify, and make your changes. Ex: to change part or all of a number format, click the Numbers tab and change the setting that you want.
• After you are done with the setting changing, try using your keyboard as normal to see if it is back to normal or not. The correct characters at this moment, should now be outputting to the display.

With a MacOS laptop, you will do the same first steps as Windows and do the other easy and simple ones as listed below:

• Check for any physical damages, the laptop temperature (too cold or hot) and cleanliness. (As above)
• Check if the Input Source under Language & Text in System Preference matches your language.
• Delete all the “.plist” files
• Delete the recently updated/installed applications, especially with the files that you have updated or installed around the time the issue occurs.
• Reset the MSC.
• Update the newest MacOS.
• Bring your Macbook to Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) stores.

Our tips above should resolve the majority of the possible problems of your laptop keyboard; however, if you can't get it back to normal, you need to send it to the support center to have a specialist check on the machine when you have time.

Please always remember to back-up all of your work as well as the important files and the hard drive or completely remove them to another safe place before doing that. That way, you'll still have your data, which is the most important part of your laptop.