Weird happenings on my laptop

[skinnydog]

Can anyone help me with this?

When I turn on my laptop and go into internet explorer on the address bar, for no reason and without touching the keys, a whole load of either p or q shows up and doesn't stop for a while. If you then go into Google for example then the same thing happens on search bit. Give it a few minutes and it goes away.

There is no damage to either the p or q keys that I can see and I did run a virus search.

It is a Dell laptop and I run Windows XP if that helps.
Cheers.

[blueivy]

Can anyone help me with this?

When I turn on my laptop and go into internet explorer on the address bar, for no reason and without touching the keys, a whole load of either p or q shows up and doesn't stop for a while. If you then go into Google for example then the same thing happens on search bit. Give it a few minutes and it goes away.

There is no damage to either the p or q keys that I can see and I did run a virus search.

It is a Dell laptop and I run Windows XP if that helps.
Cheers.

If you open notepad after you switch on your laptop does the same thing happen? If it doesn't, try opening Internet Explorer and then open Notepad and keep Notepad in the foreground.

[skinnydog]

Cheers, will try that. Do you know what would be causing it though?

[blueivy]

Cheers, will try that. Do you know what would be causing it though?

It's likely to be some kind of plugin / utility that is firing out the keystrokes. If it is a utility then the test above will tell us if it's a PC utility or an IE one.

Do you have a wireless keyboard ?

I used to have a wireless keyboard that would randomly engage the Shift and Alt keys. So you'd be typing away and all of suddenly menus would start appearing all over the place and you're typing would be in upper case / lower case / symbols etc. You get the idea. I never ever got to the bottom of this but suspect it was the wireless keyboard software.

[skinnydog]

Well I don't know if it fixed itself or opening notepad worked but hey, I am cured of the phantom p's and q's.

It was a wireless laptop by the way, not sure what you mean by wireless keyboard. As you can tell, I am a complete novice at this game.

Thanks for your help though Blue Ivy, just what I needed, straightforward instruction with no jargon or gobbledeegook.....