T60 Thinkpad Keyboard randomly stops working.

[antb]

Have a couple of T60 thinkpads which experience the same problem sporadically.

The keyboard will stop working and all key presses other than the Fn+ combinations will cease to function.

This can occur at the logon screen or sometimes after successful logon and use of the notebook it will stop with no apparent cause.

There appears to be no pattern to when or why this will occur.

Any suggestions welcomed.

[andyP Community SuperMod]

Hi antb, welcome to the forum,

I would try re-seating the keyboard connectors, how you remove the kb can be found here

[antb]

Thanks

I will give this a try, i'm perplexed by the fact it occurs with no apparent pattern and that a reboot with no further action seems to remedy the situation for a time at least. Similarly using the Fn+ hibernate key to hibernate the machine and then wake it again restores the keyboard to a useable state.

As it has occured on more than one notebook each showing no other signs of any issue I wondered if it was a known glitch somewhere.

It also seems strange how the Fn+ keys still function correctly when the problem occurs....

[antb]

Reseated keyboard connection yesterday as per link instructions.

Logged in this morning and everything working for about 5 mins then the keyboard stopped responding in the same manner as outlined above.

Any other ideas as im baffled..

Thanks

[carbon_unit]

Are you still in warranty? If so call IBM and get a new keyboard.

[spearce7]

antb,

Did you ever figure out this problem?  I am having the EXACT same problem with a T60p. 

[majunior]

I have the same problem.

For sure, it's a software related issue as it never happens under Linux.

[wwonigkeit]

I have a T61p and have exactly the same problem. Mouse and keyboard freezes up during startup/normal operation. Power cycle solves the problem, but starting to get REALLY irritating. Any ideas yet?

[ChrisH]

Has anyone found a solution to the problem yet?  One of our employees has this problem with his new T61P which started last week.  Build date January 2008.  Rebooting fixes it (usually), but sometimes it takes several reboots to allow the keyboard to work at the logon screen again.

Sometimes it stops working there, sometimes it randomly stops working after it's been logged in for a while.

I just updated the BIOS, and I will see if that fixes it, but if it happens again I will be calling Lenovo for service.  It's interesting that majunior doesn't have it happen under Linux, only Windows. 

This particular machine also will not even power on sometimes after it's been shut down; the battery has to be removed and reinserted in order for it to power on again. 

I'll update this thread along the way until my problem is resolved.

I'll have to say that since IBM became Lenovo, the quality control must have taken a dump because we've had several new laptops out of the box be bad and needed to service several others.  Been using IBMs here for 10+ years with around 40 Thinkpads and never had this many problems until IBM became Lenovo..  Oh well, it's still better than Dell

We bought a second T61P at the same time as the problematic one and it has been flawless.


Message Edited by ChrisH on 02-28-2008 12:51 PM

[ChrisH]

Well it has been 5 days since the bios update, and there have been no more keyboard problems with the laptop.

It would appear the latest bios update is the fix for this problem.

I will post back if the problem comes back again.

Chris