Is the problem only with non-printable keys like Alt, Shift, Ctrl? Maybe it’s an Ease of Access setting inadvertently turned on? (ie, Sticky Keys).
Yeah, I’ve looked into the Ease of Access options and everything seems to be in order but I’ll take a closer look later on just in case I’ve missed anything.
I have seen some crazy behavior from USB chipset microcode getting corrupted. Usually powering completely down and unplugging the computer for 10 minutes will fix it. But you had the issue with the PS2 port so uh… I got nothing.
Just do this. Sounds like you ran a registry cleaner which is, other than malware, the only explanation I can think of. A reformat would take care of both issues.
You could also try booting into safe mode, assuming you have a reliable way to replicate the problem.
Don’t ever rule out a defective piece of equipment just because you just bought it. I can’t count how many times I replaced an old defective part with a new defective part and since Corsair k70 keyboards are known to have problems you just might have gotten a bad one. If possible try the keyboard on another computer or buy a different keyboard from a different manufacturer and try it. if it doesn’t solve the problem you can always return it. Also don’t rule out a defective motherboard. My last motherboard had a problem with disappearing usb ports and when I replaced it the problem went away and no I didn’t reinstall the os (win 7) I just hooked my os drive up and it just installed all the necessary drivers and off I went, problem solved.
But that’s what I keep saying: it affected my last keyboard too, over PS/2. My new keyboard is over USB so there’s two sets of hardware over two different interfaces with the same problem. It could be my motherboard but I’m willing to do quite a lot to my system before I consider replacing that!
@Gordon_Bleu, aye, that’s the problem I’m having as well: replicating it. It’s stopped by the time you notice it!
I appreciate all the feedback everyone.
Could be the HID driver/hardware interface is having issues. Problem is, and I’ve had it before, you can do a fresh install of windows, it will seem OK for a bit, then it starts back up again once you get everything (hardware drivers and all your software) re-installed. In this case it was the motherboard. However… I did have a crappy old $10 keyboard that worked in the interim because - who knows why.
There are some other things to consider. There are so many quirks it’s impossible to list them all, so I will list one you’d never think in a million years could happen. 5 year old Saitek joysticks will lock up your computer if you run them on a USB 3.0 port. They are wholly incompatible with the latest Intel chipsets.
One last idea, it could be lag spikes in the nontraidtionao sense. ie.
your computer is choking and it manifests itself as phantom key presses. This can be cause by a multitude of things from hardware failure, to a background program not playing nice with your computer, to bad memory timings in the BIOS (or memory failing). If your computer has automatic power settings, it can be in the ramp up clock period as a program asks for more processing power. So you would notice when the clock cycle changes, then as it normalizes things settle down. Same with your video card as well. ATI and Nvidia have been pretty awful with their drivers lately. Too bad you can’t go back in time to figure out exactly when it happened because I’d bet there was something that changed on your system that may be causing it. Adobe crapware update, video card driver update, windows 10 update, accidentally changed a system setting…
My question is: does it matter what i/o the keyboards use? A defective keyboard is a defective keyboard regardless of the interface. I’m just saying try a different keyboard from a different manufacturer. As jpinard said “However… I did have a crappy old $10 keyboard that worked in the interim”. A different keyboard from a manufacturer known for quality may just work. Since you reminded me the two keyboards use different i/o’s I doubt that the motherboard is the problem.
Obvious and annoying question, I know, but are you absolutely sure you reproduced this with no USB devices connected but the keyboard and mouse? It may be worth crawling under the desk and triple-checking every USB port again.
I’ll try another keyboard just to be sure but I’m confident between the two keyboards and the two interfaces that they’re not related to the problem.
Last night I looked into the Ease of Access Sticky Keys. The entire option was disabled already, but when you enable it a bunch of other options pop up which are enabled so I disabled them just in case, then re-disabled the entire option again. I also unplugged my wireless 360 controller receiver. Went ahead and played a few hours of Helldivers on the Steam Controller and had no issues. Will be back on Titanfall 2 later so will see how that goes…
Edit: oops, yeah, @barstein I’ve not got many USB devices plugged in but will certainly remove them just in case there’s any interference coming from somewhere.
Will be very interesting to hear the final result. It’s like trying to figure out why someone has a rare disease.
Well it’s been a few days since my last update on the situation and it’s not any clearer.
Tuesday night I played Titanfall 2 (mouse and keyboard) and some Helldivers (Steam Controller) and had no issues whatsoever.
Wednesday night I unplugged my Steam Controller dongle, finished the TF2 SP campaign and had a quick round on MP. In that space of time the game went back to desktop a couple of times.
Last night I played another round of TF2 MP and the rest of the evening on Helldivers and… no problems.
It’s so weird. It’s not been as bothersome as when I first started this thread but it’s now a mystery I’d like to solve. The investigation continues.
Did you get logs from auto hot key?
Are you absolutely sure it’s a keyboard issue? Games and applications dropping out of fullscreen can be a different issue like the graphics driver. I know you said it happened with dragging files too but that could be a different issue. Your scenario is complex enough it could be more than one issue.
Sorry for the late response, forgot to respond over the weekend.
@Pod Aye, I did use AutoHotKey (no idea how to generate logs with it though) and it just so happened the times I did load it there were no issues. When the computer was idling over days and evenings it reported no key presses either :-S
@Fortitudo I’m not sure about anything at this stage! You could be right. In the last couple of weeks or so I’ve updated the graphics drivers (the first time in quite a long time) and the problem existed before and after that.
However, since my last update there’s been no signs of the problem. Titanfall 2 and Helldivers have been solid since Thursday. I even played some Overcooked last night which dropped out two or three times the last time we played it (11 days ago according to my original post). I’m hoping it’s gone for good but who knows.
I’ll keep AutoHotKey running and report any other developments here but the suggestions and feedback has been welcome folks.
I think I’ve finally worked out what was causing all this, at long last.
So originally I replaced my keyboard because I was getting phantom key presses. I’m pretty sure that was a legitimate issue because I had some weird desktop goings on and internal speaker beeps every so often from ‘pressing’ too many keys. That was solved with the new keyboard. However, games and programs losing focus I thought was also related to the phantom key presses but even with the new keyboard, it was still happening.
About… I dunno, a month or so ago, my friend who avoided the Windows 10 upgrade (he’s on Windows 7) started complaining that his games were losing focus and it was driving him nuts as well. He was using something called Focus.exe to see which programs were stealing focus so I picked that up too. In isolation we both noticed that Firefox was being flagged by Focus but then it started happening even when Firefox was closed, and this time, according to Focus it was Explorer. I didn’t really buy it, not across Windows 7 and 10. So I started nuking background programs before I started playing games, introducing some back over days while paying particular attention to when I lost focus.
It turned out to be CyberGhost, which I picked up in November as part of the LifeHacker Humble Bundle (a total waste of money looking back). The two of us picked this up roughly around the same time but he installed the program/reported his symptoms some time later so I never connected the two.
The time I started noticing key presses: God knows. Before I picked up CyberGhost.
The time I got CyberGhost: 12 Nov 2016
The time I got my new keyboard: 18 Nov 2016
The time my friend started reporting the same issues: 20 Dec 2016
He’s corroborated the culprit too. Hurrah! Problem solved.
The End. Hopefully.
This reminds me of the time that I finally identified as faulty driver built into NetLimiter as being the cause for random, intermittent 2-second complete system hangs 8-12 times a day. . .
Glad you finally (hopefully!) got it knocked out, geggis!
Thanks Armando! That sounds like a really annoying problem. How on earth did you deduce it was a faulty driver for NetLimiter?
The annoying thing is, I hardly use CyberGhost. What’s worse, BitDefender that came with the bundle doesn’t play nice with SpywareBlaster, LastPass Premium is useless to me because I’m a free customer already and everything else is kinda niche or limited to a year’s service anyway. Pah!
Process Explorer was the key, I think. Watching it, I eventually found that an svchost was spiking to 100% CPU utilization during each hang (which was hard, since everything on the pc stopped during those things, including PE!), and contained within its graph of usage by service, I eventually dug out the driver. Uninstalled and problem solved!
What does this mean? I’ve never heard of this context before. Thanks for the amazing result and info Geggis!