Keyboard problem solved

This morning, all of a sudden,the keyboard on my wife's Dell Studio 17 laptop stopped working. And not having a working keyboard is very problematic for a technical writer. Not good news...

The laptop is still under warranty, so it wasn't likely going to cost us anything but time to get it fixed. But it would have been a pain to have to go through Dell support and try all their standard suggestions before they would send somebody out (we have in-home service contract for business reasons).

Instead, I got on my computer and turned to my trusted research assistant, the Internet, and searched for "keyboard not working on dell laptop".

And it found something relevant! Other people had, indeed, had the same problem. And the solution was to "drain the flea power" (no, I'm not making that up).

To cut a long story short, here's what you do:

1. Power down the laptop.
2. Disconnect everything (eg. USB connectors, network cables, power cable).
3. Remove the battery.
4. Press and hold the power button for at least 5 seconds (we did 30).
5. Put it all back together and power it up.

And it works!

The original post is here if you want to see it. Thank you, Bricorn.

I guess this one is, at least for the moment, "a training issue". :-)