"r" key not functioning.

[AIBaon]

Recently my "R" button stopped woking popely [working properly].

I have an Alienware m15x notebook computer running Vista. Just recently, my "r" button stopped working however. This is not due to the keyboard though, since Shift+R works, and pressing the "r" on the On Screen keyboard doesn't work. I get around this problem two ways: copying an "r" and just pasting it in every time I need it, or putting CAPS Lock on,  holding shift, and pressing "r", but this is not quite how I plan on continuing my future use of the letter R.

I have tried updating my keyboard driver, with no results. I saw somewhere that maybe rebooting in Safe Mode would help, but I'm not quite sure how to do that in Vista, I held F8 while it was stating up, but nothing happened. Any ideas?

[BC_Programmer]

presumably this is occuring even after a cold reboot?

[AIBaon]

Correct. And actually, I just rebooted in safe mode (I had to press F8 sooner than I thought.) But I didn't know what to do now that I had.
So I rebooted again, normally this time, and it worked for the first minute or so of everything starting up.
I'm recently on a new network, could this have anything to do with it?

[killerb255]

Have you tried using a different keyboard, if for no other reason than to eliminate that as a possibility?

[BC_Programmer]

interesting, the fact that it worked for the first minute or two after boot-up points to a startup-program causing the problem.

any keyboard driver-type tools installed? hotkey applications and the like?

[AIBaon]

What do you mean by "keyboard driver-type tools installed? hotkey applications and the like"?

I went into Device Manager and updated all the drivers that had keyboard in the name. There were four of them:
Micosoft eHome MCIR 109 Keyboard
Micosoft eHome MCIR Keyboard
Micosoft eHome Remote Control Keyboard keys
Standard PS/2 Keyboard
although they all said they were working properly and were updated to their fullest.

[BC_Programmer]

What do you mean by "keyboard driver-type tools installed? hotkey applications and the like"?

I went into Device Manager and updated all the drivers that had keyboard in the name. There were four of them:
Micosoft eHome MCIR 109 Keyboard
Micosoft eHome MCIR Keyboard
Micosoft eHome Remote Control Keyboard keys
Standard PS/2 Keyboard
although they all said they were working properly and were updated to their fullest.

Remove all keyboard related entries except standard PS/2 keyboard.

[AIBaon]

Okay, I uninstalled the other three... but the R still has the same functionality, that is... it works with Shift, and with CTRL, I'm the on screen keyboard still works the same way.

Do I need to reboot?

[killerb255]

Is there a "Fn" or "Function" key on your keyboard?  If so, then press that first, then "R". 

[AIBaon]

Is there a "Fn" or "Function" key on your keyboard?  If so, then press that first, then "R". 

Yes there is, and no it didn't do anything.

[BC_Programmer]

try removing all the keyboard entries and rebooting.

as killerb said; try a different keyboard as well.

[AIBaon]

So while my computer was restarting, I opened a small text file and started pressing "r" about once a second to see if I would be able to notice the reason for it failing. and it turns out that that just about the time Trillian Pro http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/downloads/ (a chat client) started, the "r" stopped working, so I exited Trillian and now the R works perfectly! Although this solved my original issue, I would still very much like to use Trillian. Has anyone heard of similar issues with Trillian?

[killerb255]

I haven't had that problem with Trillian, myself.

Try uninstalling/reinstalling it?  Or download an updated version.

[patio]

There are a few issues with Trillian...

[AIBaon]

THANK YOU BC_Programmer! I was thinking about your suggestion about hotkeys, and I remembered that Trillian allows users to add shortcut keys to do different things. The list of them showed fairly usual ones, CTRL+T, and such, but there was one that was simply R, and I deleted it, so now it works. I don't know how it got there, but I don't really care that much anymore. Thanks for all your help.

-AIBaron

...there was supposed to be an "r" in it originally, but I clicked okay too soon, and I don't think I can change my username now.

[BC_Programmer]

sometimes the increased functionality of programs can reduce productivity, despite being designed for the opposite.