Periodic Insanity - t61 sometimes seems to be getting an overload of input

[ceomrman]

I just got a used t61, which I love, but I've noticed a really troublesome problem.

I'm running Windows 7 32bit w all the latest updates and Office 2007 similarly updated.

Sometimes when I'm using Word or Excel, the program will suddenly seem like I'm holding down a key forever. It'll lock up and take all of the resources of one of the two cores, and I can rarely pull it out of this state.

Right now, for example, the paper I was writing in Word has gone beserk. I saw the cursor fly up the screen as if I were holding down CTRL+left (I wasn't). It flew all the way to the top and then I couldn't do anything and still can't. I can't switch to the program with ALT+Tab, but I can bring it up if I right click the taskbar and select the document that way. I can't do anything but look at it, though. Task Manager is showing that WINWORD is using 49% of the CPU, but it doesn't say its not responding.

I've noticed the same problem in Excel, though I'm usually able to get out of the infinite loop in that case just by clicking the program and waiting and hitting escape (I dont really know why it usually works).

Does anyone have ideas about this? It's really kind of a deal breaker - I cant be lokcing up Word and Excel every two hours.

switch to the program to view it, and it does not seem to have officially locked up (task manager still shows it). I

I've set all my Office programs to autosave every three minutes, but this is insane.

Does anyone know what the problem could be?

[richk]

Look in accessories/ease of access. There should be an option to make the keyboard easier to use. See if there are unusual options set. At the bottom, there will be a button to adjust keyboard properties. See if adjustments help. In particular, turn off filter keys.  Does this only happen with office applications?

[goretsky Community Moderator]

Hello,

Have you tried temporarily disabling—or even uninstalling—your antivirus software?  If so, did that make any difference?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[ceomrman]

Thats a good idea. I checked those settings, and nothing seems amiss. Allthe options were deactiviated except for the one about pressing Num Lock for 5 seconds to activate something-or-other. I turned that off just in case.

I'm not sure if it only happens in Office. I expect that it happens system-wide, but I have not experienced it with non-Office apps. I'm writing my thesis right now, so I'm knee deep in Excel and Word all day and haven't had much time for other things, so if it happens in other settings, I probably wouldn't have seen it yet.

[ceomrman]

I have not. Why might that be the problem? I'm running Avira's personal edition, btw.

[goretsky Community Moderator]

Hello,

Some security programs might monitor keyboard, mouse and screen capture activity activity to look for keystroke loggers or banking trojans (which like to capture these events).  Just a thought, as I'm not particularly familiar with the functionality of that particular brand.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky