Space bar is permanently active

[georgiy]

Hi,
I have a big problem and have no clue how to solve it.

Alright, so I restored my old Pentium II PC, installed Windows 98 on it and everything works great.
However, when I reboot in MS-DOS and run any game, space bar is constantly active, like it's being pressed all the time. The keyboard is fine, because it works in Windows and DOS, just not in games. It is a normal PS/2 keyboard.

This is really weird... If someone can help me solve this, I'd be eternally grateful!

[DaveLembke]

Do you have another keyboard to swap this one out with?

Also odd that Windows and DOS are happy with it and its only when running DOS games that it becomes a problem.

I had a problem a ways back with a multifeatured PS2 keyboard and DOS where the Macro key kept acting up. I swapped it out with a normal 104 key keyboard and the problem was solved so that I could play Wolfenstein 3D. This was on an old Gateway 2000 486 DX2 66Mhz desktop computer that I was running Windows 95 on back around 1997.


BTW your system specs state Pentium II 533Mhz.....the fastest Pentium II I was aware of was the 450Mhz. The Pentium III's were 533Mhz. Is this a typo and really a Pentium III 533 or is this a Pentium II 333 etc?

[georgiy]

Thanks for quick reply.
I just tried switching keyboards, even plugged USB keyboard (yeah, motherboard has USB support).
However, the problem remained the same.
These are all normal keyboards, no special buttons or anything like that. It's really strange, it works in DOS, hence I can navigate to folders I want, but as soon as I run some game, space is literally locked.
Could there be some config file I should look at?

[patio]

The game(s) have yet to be mentioned...

[DaveLembke]

There use to be some annoying virus's back in the day that were TSR's that would cause people to want to throw their computers out the 2nd story window.

I'd run a scan on this system from Windows 98 to make sure everything is clean. If its a virus its an old one and probably a Windows 98 supported antivirus would pick up on it pretty quickly on the 20GB HDD with definitions from 2001 etc as for the virus if there is one is probably from almost 10 years or longer earlier when more people were on DOS.

Back 20+ years ago I got hit with some viruses as part of the shareware and otherware 720k and 1.44MB floppies that were shared among the 10 to 15 year old sneaker network computer geeks that I hung out with in the late 1980s early 1990s before the internet made everything so much more available for download etc. Back then sneaker network had 2 meanings the most common being a network of data that you walk around to computers, but also that we had to sneak the floppies into school to use them on the school computers and the panic button was turning the monitor off quickly and looking over the shoulder of a friend next to you as if your really helping them with their homework and then the teacher would leave and turn the CRT monitor back on and get back to playing the original Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, or Wolfenstein 3D, or some apogee shareware game etc.

[georgiy]

The game(s) have yet to be mentioned...

Well, one of them is Volfied.



After I run it, this intro screen disappears quickly as if I was pressing the space bar. When I start the game, (you should press space to cut these fields in the game), I can cut them freely without pressing the space bar. Also, when I press ESC to exit, I must keep pressing it really quickly a lot of times, because it skips the intro and shows me the main main of the game.
Same happens in other games.

There use to be some annoying virus's back in the day that were TSR's that would cause people to want to throw their computers out the 2nd story window.

I'd run a scan on this system from Windows 98 to make sure everything is clean. If its a virus its an old one and probably a Windows 98 supported antivirus would pick up on it pretty quickly on the 20GB HDD with definitions from 2001 etc as for the virus if there is one is probably from almost 10 years or longer earlier when more people were on DOS.

Back 20+ years ago I got hit with some viruses as part of the shareware and otherware 720k and 1.44MB floppies that were shared among the 10 to 15 year old sneaker network computer geeks that I hung out with in the late 1980s early 1990s before the internet made everything so much more available for download etc.

I just formated my HDD and installed everything fresh.
Checking if it has some viruses is good idea, though. (Who knows what was on all these CD's and floppies)

Past few days I was messing with my sound card drivers, broke system 3 times already. Finally I found good drivers, set everything and now this!
I hope my Retro Gaming PC can be fully functional, because nothing beats original hardware.

[DaveLembke]

Checking if it has some viruses is good idea, though. (Who knows what was on all these CD's and floppies)

The last time I got bit by a DOS virus it was because I introduced a bunch of unknown content floppies from a yard sale computer I bought in which the seller sold the 286 computer with about 200 floppies and I was popping them in 1 by 1 and performing a DIR to see what was there and then if I saw anything interesting for EXE's I'd run them to see what they were etc. And if it was a cool game like Digger etc, I'd save it to my 320MB Connor HDD in a directory for DOS games etc.

When I got so far into the pile and then eventually the DIR info was showing strange sizes and random ascii characters like ♦♥♣ etc where Directory info should be, i figured I had a bad disk and went on to the other. Then the other did the same and so I put in a prior disk that worked ok and that also did the same. I then used a floppy drive cleaner with the alcohol and ran that to clean it and tried again and still same issue. Swapped out the floppy drive thinking it was messed up somehow. Same results with a known good drive. I then made the mistake of taking the floppy disk to another system I had and it started doing same thing on that one.

Nothing like unknowingly spreading a virus like fire among disks and systems. Now I had 2 infected systems and a pile of before problem happened disks and the unknown ones.

Full format and reinstall of OS for both systems and then instead of introducting the floppies to an unprotected system with no antivirus running I brought them over to my newest system at the time that had an antivirus on it and scanned through the small pile I had and they were clean and then when I got to the known trouble floppy disks, it immediately detected and told me what virus it had and I was able to clean them. I then continued to go through my entire collection of floppies to make sure the virus was killed off. What a Pain that was!!!!   The virus also corrupted some files on the floppies and so some data loss happened.   The good thing is that I had a backup on floppies of the DOS game collection I had, but then had to copy the 30+ disks back to the freshly clean installed HDD.

[georgiy]

@DaveLembke
I completely understand you. These kind of problems made me switch to Linux. Back in the day (around 2000) I installed on this exact machine (see my specs for more info) Red Hat Linux 7.0 and everything worked great. After a month or so, I managed to set my modem as well! What a happiness that was. However, there were no my DOS games! So I constantly switched between Windows and Linux, just because of gaming, lol.
Few months ago, after I remembered having this PC, I installed Debian GNU/Linux 7 (prior to this there was Windows XP installed, which ran horribly) and I even managed to make USB WI-FI card working on this machine. Though this was perfectly usable machine, I still wanted my native DOS Box.

Wish Microsoft developed it's OS's more UNIX-like, hopefully these kind of problems wouldn't exist.

Anyway, I'll try installing Anti-Virus tomorrow on this machine and let you know how it went through.

[foxidrive]

Well, one of them is Volfied.

This is an emulator by the look of it.
Does the problem occur in other games, like Doom and Duke Nukem that don't run in an emulator?

[BC_Programmer]

This is an emulator by the look of it.

What makes you say that?

[georgiy]

Eureka! I have found it.

So I reformatted my HDD yet again and installed Windows 98 SE this time. I loaded the game on HDD and rebooted in DOS. And everything worked, space bar wasn't "jammed". Then I installed Anti-Virus, graphic card and sound card drivers. I rebooted again in DOS and keyboard was malfunctioning again. I returned in Windows and disabled sound card drivers completely. Rebooted again in DOS and everything worked. So then I became suspicious and re-enabled sound card drivers, but disabled only Gameport Joystick.  It turned out that was the problem. I have no Joystick connected to my sound card, so that might be it, or the port itself might be damaged. Whatever it was, now it is working perfectly.



Thanks everyone for constructive discussion. Mystery solved!

[georgiy]

BTW your system specs state Pentium II 533Mhz.....the fastest Pentium II I was aware of was the 450Mhz. The Pentium III's were 533Mhz. Is this a typo and really a Pentium III 533 or is this a Pentium II 333 etc?

Oops, lol!
I mistyped it... twice!

Yes, it is Pentium III!