Ticking sound when keyboard is pressed? Windows 7

I suddenly can't use my laptop's keyboard. I think my cat accidentally pressed something or held down some button (while I was asleep) because now, whenever I try to press any button, I only get ticking sounds and the key is not being registered. The touch pad works fine.

I tried lowering down the volume and sure enough, the ticking went away when I tried it which to me, verifies that it's not a hardware beep but more of a OS-related setting. Can anyone help me out? It's running Windows 7 32-bit. It doesn't really go well with the fact that I have some deadlines to meet. xD

8

3 Answers

I would try running my hands across the keyboard semi-wildly, making sure every single key has been pushed, jiggled, unstuck...

The ticking noise is usually caused by the keyboard buffer being full. That tends to happen if your operating system has crashed or halted somehow, but there could be other reasons. Are all your programs responsive when you use the touch pad?

Can you try closing all your running programs, and maybe restart explorer? This can be done entirely with the mouse: open task manager with right-click on the taskbar, find explorer in the process list, terminate it, go file->new task (run), and browse to explorer.exe in C:\Windows

Have you tried plugging in a USB keyboard?

I would make sure you have all your urgent documents backed up onto USB stick and then reboot the system. If the keyboard doesn't come right and you can't use a USB keyboard, then the computer is useless for now and you'll have to find an alternative while you get it fixed - at least you'll have all your relevant data so you can still (hopefully) meet your deadlines.

5

It's plausible that the Filter Keys mode has been enabled accidentally.

In order to disable Filter Keys:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Go to Ease of Access Center
3. Find the link called "Make the keyboard easier to use"
4. Click the "Turn on Filter Keys" checkbox to disable it
5. Click OK.

2

I had the same problem after forcing my (dell xps17) laptop to shutdown. It somehow ended up in "manufactured mode" with this bip.

I just had to press fn + x just when restarting it to solved that.

I did not even know they were a "manufactured mode" before that.