I have a 4 year old Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop that has been working just fine. I shut it down yesterday before driving from Raleigh to my parents house in Charlotte.

Today I turned it on as usual (no error msgs) and now the keyboard and mouse inputs are all messed up. If I want to type anything I have to type very slowly and sometimes hit every key twice to get the computer to recognize the keystroke and type anything properly. To type this very OP would probably take a good ten minutes on that computer. Additionally, the mouse is all jerky. I can't move it around (via the touch pad) that quickly at all, rather very slowly (and this has nothing to do with mouse tracking settings). Additionally if I want to click on anything with the mouse buttons I have to click it 2-3 times just for it to acknowledge the click.

I have no idea where to even begin to troubleshoot this. I've reset the computer a few times to no avail. The computer itself hasn't had any issues and has not been acting sluggish. There is plenty of free memory.

Any advice on how to fix this would be appreciated. If it's an easy fix that's great. If something happened to my computer and I'm SOL - well at least I'd know.

PLZ help! Thanks in advance to any kind souls that can help me out.

12/24/2010 5:38:55 PM

Quote :

"TKE-Teg: I have a 4 year old Dell Inspiron"

That's your problem right there...

(jk jk jk)

It almost sounds like the universal access controls got enabled, the stuff for people with disabilities. idk what control panel that'd be.

That's my meager effort at helping. If your Dell is anything like that past Dells I've helped fix, something's probably wonky with the circuit board or something else hardware-related  

12/24/2010 7:05:14 PM

restart a few times.

also boot into safe mode and see if the behavior continues.

you could also plug in a usb keyboard and mouse.

have you installed anything new / leave your computer on all the time and never reboot ?

might be time for a system restore/rollback.

12/24/2010 11:39:22 PM

Thanks for the suggestions.

Starting in safe mode didn't change anything. Furthermore, when (in start up after pressing F8) it was asking me to chose which way to sign in the keyboard was still working improperly, sluggish and somewhat nonresponsive. That makes me worry that it's not a Windows problem. I've reformatted this computer before; perhaps doing it again could fix the problem? Though if there's an easier way I'd prefer that.

Edit: just plugged in an external mouse and it works fine. What the hell does this mean??

[Edited on December 25, 2010 at 3:31 PM. Reason : External mouse]

12/25/2010 3:28:49 PM

Are you saying when you plug in the external mouse everything is fine? (as in that the laptop keyboard and mouse now work or are they still sluggish?) or only external mouse is working fine?

[Edited on December 25, 2010 at 10:33 PM. Reason : .]

12/25/2010 10:32:52 PM

Sorry to not be clear.

When plugging in the external mouse the pointer works just fine. But nothing changes with the keyboard - it still does not work. Nor does the pointer if I use the touch pad to move it around.

12/26/2010 6:34:05 PM

I'm back in Raleigh now and am posting from my laptop (computer's been off the last two days).


And...everything is working normally again. So odd.

Oh well, I'll chalk this up to good luck and will make sure I have everything up to date on my back up HD.

12/27/2010 4:03:59 PM