“Why won’t this let me type anything?” the wife stated from across the room. We were sitting in the study where we have our computers.
“What?”
“The keyboard won’t let me type anything.”
Ah. The light dawns. I turned around and moved to her computer. I tapped a few keys and sure enough no text shows up on her screen.
“It’s a wireless keyboard. Maybe the batteries need to be replaced. Hand it over.”
She hands me the keyboard.
I took it into the kitchen, where we keep a drawer full of batteries. I turned the keyboard over, and noted that there is some kind of liquid on the back of it. Then I noted I felt liquid coming from the number keys (the keyboard has a separate number keypad) that are now pressed against my finger tips.
“What happened?” I called out to the wife. “Did you spill something on the keyboard?”
“I spilled my drink earlier but it went all over the floor. I cleaned it up.”
“Ah. That explains it. Looks like it got the keyboard too because I got liquid all over my fingers coming out of the number keys.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Not a problem. But you probably shouldn’t be drinking around your computer anymore.”
Fortunately this is a (relatively) easy fix. I hopped in the car and went to Wal-Mart to pick up a new wireless keyboard for her computer. I was back in about twenty minutes. I put batteries in the new keyboard, turned it on, hit the ‘connect’ button and … nothing.
I worked through several steps – unplugging the dongle and reinsertig it, rebooting the computer, sacrificing a live pizza to the Computing Gods, and a few other things. I pressed both the Num Lock key and the Caps Lock key, expecting the little LED lights to come on. Nothing. I shut down the computer to let it rest and go watch a program with the wife.
After the show was over I came back to her computer and started it up again. Pressed the Num Lock key and still no LED light. I took the batteries out and noted they were a little warm. I’d put the batteries in backwards. D’oh!
After getting the batteries in the right way everything worked fine. All is right with the world again.
No need for thanks, friend citizen. All in a day’s work for Wireless Keyboard Troubleshooting Man.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum