Solved! Old Laptop help

jgiron

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Nov 11, 2008
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A friend of mine gave me an old ASUS laptop M2400N.
It's a 1.6ghz with 768Mhz

It is having a few issues I am hoping are simple to resolve.
It has WinXP SP2 and the keyboard in Windows is mis-mapped? Meaning when I enter the command prompt and try to type I get weird characters ($d, #^&3 etc...)
This happens every time I use the keyboard (with the exception of the windows key and the enter key)

When I try to update to SP3 it stalls. It stalls on the screen that says installing SP3.


I tried installing Ubuntu (v9 & v11) and it stalls on the start up screen (even when try the demo/install).
I did run a mem test using Unbuntu and it passed and I have swapped out the hard drives.

I am thinking something might be wrong with the comp itself but I am hoping that it might be a simple fix??

I would like to either get the keyboard issue fixed so I can use it in windows
or
install Ubuntu
or both.
 
Solution
Keyboard issues are hard to troubleshoot. You did the right thing by plugging in a USB one to test so it throws out faulty keyboard/keyboard chip (I forgot the technical name for that chip right now)

Right now Nvidia is being a pain when it comes to Linux again with their Optimus technology on their new laptops, Linux can't run the proper graphic drivers currently.
It seems like the keyboard is in Unicode for some odd reason when it comes to cmd prompt.

As for Linux, I think the old school Asus mobos did not support Linux and it was very picky on what it can run. I think you might be able to run OpenSuse or Fedora. Those old Asus things used to drive me nuts until I found a distro that would install.
 
Thanks for the assist but unfortunately the keyboard still has issues.
I did follow this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/50258-34-laptop-keyboard-problem.
Regional settings are set to the US
I've also tried connecting a USB Dell Keyboard and I am still having the same issue.

from what i've seen the FN key is affecting the keyboard (pressing ENTER does not work, pressing FN+ENTER does work and so do the keys when num lock is on and when i press the FN Key.

thanks for the tip about Ubuntu


 
Keyboard issues are hard to troubleshoot. You did the right thing by plugging in a USB one to test so it throws out faulty keyboard/keyboard chip (I forgot the technical name for that chip right now)

Right now Nvidia is being a pain when it comes to Linux again with their Optimus technology on their new laptops, Linux can't run the proper graphic drivers currently.
 
Solution