HP Laptop Keyboard Problems -- the Computer is Personal Again? Maybe not

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While HP has done a nice job taking laptop market share from Dell and launching a slick marketing campaign using the slogan &quot;the computer is personal again&quot;, we wonder why their quality control, tech support and respect for customers isn't following suit with this campaign. We present the woeful and now epic tale of the HP Pavilion dv8000 and other dv series laptops that have keyboards with a mind of their own.

How it Started

The HP Pavilion dv8000 notebook is a 17&quot; multimedia laptop from HP that was sold in the first half of 2006 (view large image)

It all started on a fateful June day when a poster in the NotebookReview.com forums posed the question &quot;dv8000 series keyboard problems. Anyone else?&quot; This poster had been thinking he was losing his mind based on the randomness of his keyboard registering keystrokes. Sometimes key presses wouldn't register unless you hit a key in precisely the &quot;right place&quot;. Sometimes the space bar wouldn't register at all. Sometimes CAPS LOCK CAME ON RANDOMLY AND EVERYTHING HE TYPED WAS STUCK IN CAPS. But then other times he wanted Caps Lock on and it didn't work. And sometimes the Shift key would stick after being pushed. The poster also noticed other places on the web with similar complaints:

• New York Times technology site dv8000 problem posts
• HP.com forum dv8000 help requests
• Irate Amazon.com dv8000 customers
• Create Digital Music article about &quot;HP Laptop Lemons&quot;
• NotebookForums.com discussion regarding HP keyboard issues
• TalkShack.com discussion about HP keyboard issues
• Angry Epinions.com dv8000 reviewers
• Shopping.com angry dv8000 reviewer
• Harvard Physics Professor webpage about HP keyboard problems and how to replace keyboard

I could go on listing sites where the web denizens have typed (or at least tried to type) out their misery, but you get the point right?

HP keyboard problem discussion will cause us to have to increase database server storage capacity

Apparently the HP section of the NotebookReview.com forums became the &quot;go to&quot; place for discussion of keyboard problems related to some of the Pavilion notebooks. Namely the dv8000 and dv5000 line. Here's just a sample list of threads related to the HP keyboard problem we have in the forums here:

• DV8000 Series - Keyboard problems. Anyone else? (most active)
• v3000 keyboard issue?
• Compaq V3000Z Keyboard
• dv4000: keyboard key came out..please help!
• keyboard doesn't work
• HP dv8000t Keyboard Checkup Guide!
• Its official HP dv2000z has keyboard issue
• Response from HP regarding Keyboard Problem
• Dv8000 Keyboard problem *please read*
• Do the keyboard problems exist in the dv8320us?
• i have a idea maybe we can fix the keyboard problem
• could we just by change the driver of keyboard for fix the problem?
• NX9105 - the keyboard drives me insane
• keyboard problems with Compaqs
• DV5000 Keyboard--How worried should I be?
• Compaq V2000 Keyboard Upgrade Alternative?
• how to fix the keyboard stuck problem?
• dv5000 keyboard scramble problem
• Does anyone here actually own a dv8000 and NOT have keyboard problems?
• HP DV5130 Keyboard Problems
• HP dv4170us makes weird soft beeping noise from left area of keyboard
• dv2000 - Keyboard and Build Quality?
• Does the dv8000t have keyboard problems?
• HP dv 4000 keyboard wears out
• DV4000 keyboard
• HPdv4000 Keyboard wears out?
• DV4000 keyboard/mouse locking up in games
• mushy keyboard-dv4000
• Keyboard problems with the X6000

In case that's not enough evidence to make you believe there's at least some type of problem, witness this video a forum member took of his dv8000t keyboard acting up:

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We know HP knows about this problem, but do they care?

A couple of our members in the forums were privileged enough to have contacts or know of people that worked for HP in Taiwan. Without disclosing any names, a person with the dv8000 contacted me via email and indicated he bought the notebook and noticed the keyboard problem right away. He knew a guy who works for the HP notebook hardware division in Taiwan so sent him an email. It turns out that the friend actually worked in the design group for the dv8000 so they got on the phone and worked through a few things, and even got the person that designed the keyboard area involved with the conversations. People in the hardware division had not heard of this problem before (this was in August) but soon after HP sent out an email for this problem to be tested. So as of 4 months ago we know HP was looking into the problem. This specific person that was unhappy with his dv8000 keyboard got a replacement in the form of a dv9000z and was asked to send his dv8000 to an HP center for one of the engineers to look at.

In order to get the dv9000z replacement for the mal-working dv8000 the NBR member was given &quot;special&quot; customer support. Other members on NBR have had to ship their notebook back to HP several times to &quot;fix&quot; it, but usually their notebook ended up getting scratched and damaged in the process and never at all fixed.

We asked HP to comment on the issue and they did indicate to us a BIOS update had been released to hopefully fix the problem, but when forum members tried this &quot;fix&quot; it turned out to be another false hope. To date there is no fix for this keyboard problem. It's likely a hardware issue as users have indicated the problems exist in both Windows and Linux. It seems the best solution is to send in your laptop about 3 times for repair, then demand a new replacement notebook. Another solution is to post a video on YouTube.com as our forum member that took this approach is magically getting helped out with a new HP notebook now. No, they're not giving him another dv8000.

 

 

Well, they got your money, what do they need to do now to help you? Unfortunately, with computers having zero-margins, these companies no longer want to fix issues or give good customer support. As soon as they have to provide support or fix a problem, they have lost money. I don't think any computer manufacturer is immune to these types of actions.

 

Very dissapointing to hear indeed. So that isn't a software issue? Drivers ect?

 

The video was very convincing. The keyboard is one of the most important factors to me when buying a notebook, and would easily make or break my decision.

The dv8000t I tested in June didn't have these problems, but then again, I only had it for a couple of weeks.

 

99% sure it's not, users with the problem have even installed Linux to see if the problem goes away and it does not. Seems to be hardware, although it could be a combination of hardware / driver issues.

 

I hate it when companies know of a problem, and then claim to fix it, but then never do. It seems so mean on the consumer, who pays their hard earned money for a notebook, they expect to be in prfect working order, with nothing wrong with it at all.

I remember when I was doing research into buying a notebook, I looked at the Fujitsu Siemens M3438G. The predecessor model to the notebook I have now, and the first thing when I typed it into google, there was the lagging problem. I researched alot into this, and realised it appeared on many forums, and websites alike. The thing with that notebook as that Fujitsu Siemens had known about the issue for many many months, and they didn't say anything happened. When they did say there was a problem, they said they couldn't reproduce the problem, and there would be no fix. I think eventually, they blamed it on the graphics, which weren't at fault. In the end, it had something to do with the SATA controller.

I don't mean to kick HP, who build some very good notebooks with good reliability, but they should do a little more to help the consumers. But I suppose, that can be said to many other companies as well.

 

But we have to consider the fact that HP and caters to people in the MASS MARKET. Their customers are those who knows nothing much about notebook. Look at their advertisements, hella lame !!! which notebook can't store pictures, movies, music???? And look at the Dell advertisement which shows a guy being dragged in his couch.....OMG I almost puked.

 

Well written.

Aside from the keyboard, I'm actually "okay" with the dv8000. For my next laptop, I'm seriously going to save up money and get a corporate one because they just "feel" better.

I'm wondering...has anyone tried using local media like their TV stations to see if they can escalate matters?

 

Yesterday I went to a store here and saw hp, lenovo and dell laptops. HP's looks are nice and the palm rests gives u a solid metallic feel. When I compared it with lenovo side by side lenovo seemed to be more robust and the keyboard of lenovo felt much better than hp. My __guess__ is that chances of surviving a drop test for lenovo and dell are better than the hp eventhough people say that hp laptop's body is more robust. The dell Inspiron's body looks almost same as my old fujitsu lifebook c series and my laptop did survived few drops and rough use.

 

Nicely written article. The keyboard issue is a real bummer, since the dv8000 is otherwise a near perfect (17 inch) notebook. I've had mine for nearly 8 months, and I absolutely love everything about it. The keyboard in particular is fabulous. A real pity that so many people are having trouble with it.

 

I myself have been dealing with a few forum members regarding this issue, and all the symptoms point to a hardware problem. Our dv8000 keyboard thread even has reports of this happening in distros of Linux so it certainly isn't software.

While some newer models might not have this issue, it certainly speaks for how HP tried to shove this under the rug...

 

If a small business tried to do this with a similar problem with their product, they'd go out of business. It really is a shame that HP is handling the problem this way because it's cheaper to do nothing than to make good on the products they've sold. They know they will continue to sell computers, so they don't have the concerns about customer satisfaction that a small business has.

 

IVE BEEN HAVING PROBLEMS WITH MY DV6000T BUT WITH THE MOUSE NOT THE KEYBOARD

 

Excellent information. Thank you for posting. A great resource for consumers.

 

Business line owners are lucky Really though, I would have thought HP was better than this. Kinda disappointing...

 

I have heard of this happening to other brands of laptops. Typically though, it is just a matter of having the "FilterKeys" enabled.

Try holding down the shift key for around 10 seconds, this should prompt a popup menu. From the menu go to settings. The "Use StikyKeys" should have its box checked but non of the other options should be checked.

I don't know if this is the issue, it may not be, but it has fixed the problem for other brands so the "StickyKeys" could be the problem for the HP notebooks.

 

Kind of dissapointed when I read this. I though HP is a quality notebook & privide good after-sale services. Just hope that doen't happen to my HP notebook

 

the guy in the video is could have increased the font size when shooting the video instead of zooming.

 

I feel truly sorry for all HP customers facing such a problem since, I had recently had a very bad experience with my Asus W3J as well!

I believe it is very bad for laptop manufacturers not to care about their after-sale support since they will eventually turn these customers away -- unless one cannot really live without a laptop!

Thus, I strongly suggest all professional users (myself included) to think twice before purchasing a laptop. If one cannot do without a laptop for business or other purposes like myself one solution might be to purchase two middle priced laptops instead of a very expensive one (such as Asus W3J) that might break down any time and then you might end up waiting for ages until the company repairs it or...not!

The second laptop can be easily used as a backup drive ready to take over if the first laptop breaks down!

"Good night and good luck".

 

Ay carumba! Makes me so happy I got Fujitsu N6210 instead of dv8000z. The screen was the dealbreaker, but there was just something about HP that I couldn't trust.

You know, if this was Apple, this news would be all over the place, making Apple a laughing stock of the uhh e-neighborhood, here it's just "it's a shame"... Maybe that's why Apple fixes things fairly quickly. Doesn't explain why new models have defects in their first few weeks though.

Malia

 

My brother has a Toshiba Satellite (my laptop broke, he is away, so I have been using it for a couple weeks) and it is having the exact same problem described here. It happened a couple times a day for a few days in a row (restarting fixed the problem temporarily), but has been ok for the past week.

 

But for old HP such as nc6000, nc8000, i think there is no keyboard-related problem as I had nc6000 and its keyboard worked very well till now

 

I'm fairly certain that the issue was related to that family of laptops from HP. They did something bad back then, and moved away from those parts in the current (newer models). Laptops older than that did not have a problem either, so HP probably did something cheap and learned a hard lesson.

Unfortunately, they still need to learn about Customer Care. Our dv8000 keyboard thread is approaching 70 pages long! It has (as of right now) 662 posts by a large number of users. Many of them share stories of failed part replacements, BIOS updates, drivers updates, and a few personally designed modifications that all fail to fix this issue.

Actually, that thread was the ONE reason I hesitated when purchasing my nc8430. I eventually bit because I've had a more positive experience with HP in the past and I figured I would find that problem soon enough to return it if I got hit with it.

However, it does say something about their people skills...and that worries me. Either they throw it under a rug or launch an illegal investigation...they can't seem to stick with one strategy!

 

I have an HP nc8430. When I read the title and saw the user was using the new Office 2007, I thought this was the same problem I was having. Just much less severe. My problem is that in Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Vista doesn't remember the state of my mute button on the keyboard, however it remembers the state of the icon in my system tray. So when I reboot when I previously had my laptop muted, my keyboard doesn't think it is muted however the OS still does. So the button function is then inverted.

 

That's and HP Quick Launch program problem. You need that (and a Vista version that doesn't exist no less) for the problem to disappear.

 

Does taht awful problem happend in newer HP laptops? dv2000/ dv6000 / dv9000 ?

 

The keyboard problems seem to be isolated to the dv8000 & dv5000 series both of which have been discontinued. I havent heard of any issues with the newer HP/Compaq series. I am currently using the V3000(Compaq version of the dv2000) and there has not been any keyboard issues.

 

and you wonder why they were discontinued... i bought my dv8000t a month before they stopped selling it lol and then this dam keyboard problem...

 

Actually, various versions of the preconfigured dv8000 series notebooks are still being sold by several national retailers. In fact, I just bought one Saturday. And then came home and saw this article - talk about a buzzkill!

Nonetheless, I got a great deal on this dv8408us at COMP USA. After instant savings and rebates it came to $750, with a Core Duo 1.83, 80GB 5400 rpm SATA, 256MB GeForce Go 7600, 512MB DDR2 (to be upgraded of course), Lightscribe, remote, MCE, etc. I simply couldn't pass this deal up (it's still going on, BTW). The ship date from Compal was October 14, so I assume they were still being produced at that point.

After seeing the article, I was tempted to return the unit unopened, but I decided to open it and take a look. So far, everything is working flawlessly. The build quality of this unit is quite impressive, much better than my (very) old Dell, which did last me quite a few years. I am having no problems at all with the keyboard and I am wondering if there are any signs I should look for that might indicate I may have problems down the road ...

Ironically, one of the reasons I chose this notebook over others, including the dv9000, was for the intelligent design of the keyboard. So many notebook makers these days find some way to screw up the keyboard, such as by reducing the size of the shift keys, awkward touchpad alignment, etc.

This keyboard issue is really a shame because the dv8000 is really an almost perfect notebook for what it was designed for.

 

Not even close mate. Stickykeys are an extremely common stuff and everyone knows about it...

 

OK, I will give this suggestion a try. That will be my last ditch effort before I return this laptop to Costco. Most things about the laptop are great, but the keyboard issue sucks

 

Ok so I found an older web site that had a fix for this so I tried it on my hp zd8000 (having the same trouble as all of you but it worked fine for the 16 months I had it) and it worked! At last for now it's. It's actually pretty easy. Here's what i did.

1. Pop out keyboard. I have 17incher so there are several tabs along the edge of the keyboard where I put in a a thin flat head screw driver and pried the keyboard up. 15-inchers and smaller probably have the tabs in different spots. my spots are between the f1 and f2 keys, f6 and f7 keys, f11 and f12 keys, end and page up keys, and to the right of the - symbol on the number pad

2. Then, where the thin film of plastic with circuits running through it connects to the main body of the computer, I pulled outward (to the right on the right side and to the left on the left side) on the ends of the little black plastic piece that mates to the white plastic piece. (the white piece is attatched to the main computer, do not try to remove it.) the black piece pops out and then the thin plastic with circuitry can be romoved. Don't be shocked - the end of the plastic w/ circuitry just end in regular plastic...you will think you broke it but you didn't, thats just how it is.

3. put the plastic w/ circuitry right back in where it came out (under the white piece. then slide the black piece back in place under the plastic w/circuitry and into the white piece. basically the black piece sanwhiches the the plastic w/ circuitry against the white piece where the circtuits connect.

4. put the keyboard back and your done.


Now it sounds a little scary but it's not too bad at all. And best of all my keyboard is working great again. on the web site where I found this fix it said it would probabl fix the probalem for goo, but if not it would last for at least 2 to 3 months...so I guess we'll see! Good luck

Rod

 

I have Pavilion dv8000. I had and still my share of the keyboard problems. In mine like in the video is having problems with CAPS. When it happes you can't tell why and when. I found that if I press either left or right combination of keys ALT and SHIFT the problem will go away and I do not have to reboot. Ufff. But this is not a fix. I send it for repair and it came back with the new keyboard (still not sencsitive enough one has to pund it from time to time) the same problem is persisting. I am shipping it again tomorrow and they are promissing to fix it (will see). Otherwise I like the laptop. Please e-mail me if you have the same problem and it got fixed by HP. My e-mail [email protected]

Robert

 

I have Pavilion dv8000. I had and still my share of the keyboard problems. In mine like in the video is having problems with CAPS. When it happes you can't tell why and when. I found that if I press either left or right combination of keys ALT and SHIFT the problem will go away and I do not have to reboot. Ufff. But this is not a fix. I send it for repair and it came back with the new keyboard (still not sencsitive enough one has to pund it from time to time) the same problem is persisting. I am shipping it again tomorrow and they are promissing to fix it (will see). Otherwise I like the laptop. Please e-mail me if you have the same problem and it got fixed by HP. My e-mail [email protected]

Robert