Laptop's period key not working. (two internal keyboards tested)

Good evening all.

I have had a HP Pavilion Laptop land in my... err... well... lap, and I can not figure out what is wrong with the period key not working. I inherited the laptop because my friend couldn't get the period key to work either, and he didn't want to mess with it anymore. (Even though I have messed with it more in the past three days than he had in the whole time he had it.)

Laptop model is HP Pavilion DV6-3019wm.

I have tried two different internal/laptop keyboards and neither will type a period. I have tested one of the keyboards in another DV6-3019wm, before installing it into my laptop and the period key worked fine in that laptop.

Every other key works fine on the laptop, so I am unsure what could be causing just the period (and 'greater than') key to not work.

Since I have tried using two different keyboards I don't think I have anything under the key, but I am at a loss at what could be causing ONLY the period key to not function.

Unless of course it is the motherboard or the ribbon connector where the keyboard plugs in at...

Any clue?

Also... if it is the mainboard or something that is expensive I would rather just use a program or something that will let me hit another key to type a period... something like the right-hand ALT or CTRL keys...

Any suggestions?


Thanks for the help.

 

Just tried an external USB keyboard and it won't type a period either.

 

Hmm... I installed Sharpkeys to see if I could remap my period key to my right CTRL key, and here is what I found out... On Sharpkeys you can either choose a key from a drop down list to 'Map from' or you could just press the key you wantto 'Map from'... well.. just out of curiousity I pressed the period key on the laptop and Sharpkeys saw that the key was pressed, BUT... it said it was the RIGHT CTRL key.

I tested all the other keys around the period key and they are the correct keys showing up. So I figured I would press the actual RIGHT CTRL key to see what it would show in Sharpkeys... and it showed it was mapped correctly as the RIGHT CTRL key...

So.. now I know the actual key works but the laptop is seeing it as the RIGHT CTRL key... so... um... how do I fix that?

 

I was going to say with two different keyboards not working it would seem like a Windows problem. Which version of Windows are you using?

***I'm not familiar with Sharpkeys but can you just assign the period key the period from the drop down box? You'd have to keep sharpkeys running but it would solve the problem.

 

Where is the edit button? Heh. ( I see the edit button now... I wonder why I didn't before)

No clue what I did, but it is working for now.

I went into the regional settings in the Control Panel and made sure everything was set to US. I then was looking around and saw the decimal key was actually listed as a key (or a symbol to use) and something hit me... why not try to map the decimal key to the RIGHT CTRL key. So I hit Apply on the Regional Settings window even though I don't think I changed anything and proceeded to open up the Sharpkeys program again.

I opened up the Sharpkeys program and scrolled down til I found the "." NumPad key and clicked it for the 'Map from' key and then clicked the actual RIGHT CTRL key for the 'Map to' key. Then wrote it to the registry.

I then logged off and back on and tested it out... nothing happened. I was hitting the RIGHT CTRL key and nothing was happening, so I decided to at least try hitting the actual period key... and it started typing periods! I was all "WTF" and O.O ... I then decided to push my luck to see if it would let me hold shift and get a 'greater than' sign to type... and it let me do that even!

Like I said.... no clue what I did, but it worked... now I hope it doesn't reset after I log off of it...

 

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit.

Yeah, I did that with Sharpkeys, but for some reason it would never type anything when I hit the key that I mapped the period key to... I am guessing Windows kept telling Sharpkeys that the period key was the RIGHT CTRL key until I assigned the decimal to the RIGHT CTRL key...

And maybe then everything went back to normal... I have no clue what I did that fixed it.

 

Good Work!

Regional and Language settings has to be one of the most confusing parts of Windows. It seems to have lots of little hidden things that are difficult to navigate. I just looked around in there and I can't figure out what you might have done to change things.

I'm glad you have found a work around. At least you know it is an OS problem and if you ever need to, a re-install will remedy the situation, should it come to that.

Right after I posted my initial response, I looked at the time-stamps of your other posts and thought to myself, "this guy will have it figured out by himself in another 20 minutes". You did it in 13--I'm impressed!