Out Of Control

July 13, 2006 3:14 PM

The CTRL keys on my Kinesis Advantage ergonomic keyboard have suddenly gone wrong. Why?

With no warning, the CTRL keys on my Kinesis Advantage keyboard now both activate the Windows Start Menu, and appear to do nothing else. For example, CTRL-9 in FrameMaker normally activates the Paragraph Format interface, but now I just wind up with a '9' in the text, as if I'd never pressed CTRL.

I'm on Windows XP Professional, Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 (Service Pack 2), and I don't have any accessibility options enabled.

I've tried resetting the keyboard's options with no success, and I am using no macros on the keyboard.

Help!

posted by scrump to Technology (11 answers total)

Response by poster: One additional datum: I can no longer open new tabs in Firefox with CTRL-T.
posted by scrump at 3:19 PM on July 13, 2006

Plug it into anther PC to see if it's the keyboard or the OS. There are a number of ways to modify how keys are interpreted under Windows, the simplest is to write a registry entry that remaps them.

See if you have an entries under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

(Or one can write a keyboard driver, or a shim that inserts between the keyboard driver and the OS, or a keyboard hook that grabs all windows VK key messages and modifies them.)

So if it's not the keyboard or registry, try booting in safe mode and see if the problem persists.
posted by orthogonality at 3:44 PM on July 13, 2006

Best answer: It sounds like you somehow set the keyboard to the Mac configuration, where the key labeled "Ctrl" acts as the command/windows key.

Unfortunately I don't know how this configuration is set -- this page describes the layouts but not how to switch them.
posted by xil at 4:01 PM on July 13, 2006

The manual ought to help you figure out how to switch it back, though.
posted by xil at 4:03 PM on July 13, 2006

...and it sounds like all you have to do is hold down the "=" key and press "w". This is kind of buried in the manual, page 25.
posted by xil at 4:08 PM on July 13, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks, xil!

I realized what happened: I'd managed to switch the keyboard to Mac layout while I was editing something in vi in a shell window. Apparently I was in another focus, and tried to do the :wq thing, and, because I wasn't in my vi session, switched the keyboard layout instead.

I'd actually tried RT'ing the FM, but clearly missed the bit you found. Thanks again.
posted by scrump at 4:18 PM on July 13, 2006

Off topic, but do you like using the keyboard? I'm thinking of getting one.
posted by voidcontext at 4:57 PM on July 13, 2006

I've bought three of the Kinesis Classics, but I finally gave up on them. They are just not reliable enough for such an expensive keyboard. They fail much sooner than they should.

Wonderful keyboards, but I've never gotten more than 2 years out of one, and they cost $200 apiece.
posted by Malor at 7:31 PM on July 13, 2006

Response by poster: voidcontext, I've owned two, with this second one on its third year or so. I've loved every one: the only problem I'm having with this one is that the wrist pads are tending to migrate a little, and that's easy enough to fix.

I've never had one fail, but, on the other hand, I've never paid for my own, either: work picked up the tab.
posted by scrump at 8:08 PM on July 13, 2006

I have two of them (one for work, one for home), and both are still like new, aside from being a little dirty. One's 9 years old, the other is 5 years old. Either I'm very light on keyboards, Malor is very hard on keyboards (how did they fail?), or both.
posted by xil at 11:55 PM on July 13, 2006

Thanks for the feedback - sorry to threadjack.
posted by voidcontext at 7:36 AM on July 14, 2006