Lately I've been wanting to set my keyboard on fire.

I type pretty fast - a natural side effect of having whiled away a lot of hours in front of a computer - but the keyboard I use at work can't cope.

I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue or a software problem, but when I start typing full speed, the keyboard just stops registering about a third of the keys I press. The easiest way to reproduce the problem is to hit Backspace about 10 times as fast as I can; maybe 6 of the hits will actually register on the computer.


Is this because my keyboard is a cheap piece of crap, or is it some kind of OS stupidity? I've fiddled around with all the key repeat/key delay options in Windows to no avail. Haven't checked the BIOS yet but if this gets any worse I'll happily reboot a few times to get it sorted.


TL;DR I'm faster than my keyboard and getting really pissed off at it.

What type of keyboard is it? Could it be a problem of key reset distance, or limites based on number of "simultaneous" keys pressed?

I have a cheap $10 keyboard and don't experience this problem - maybe there is some software scanning keypresses for hotkeys in the background, and the software is laggy?

Try seeing if there is a better keyboard driver available. Maybe your keyboard has a custom driver, and the driver is poorly written.

Sounds like a crappy keyboard... Does it have soft, spongy keys? Maybe it's just got bad contacts?

Is this a keyboard you have had for a long time? Did it just start happening suddenly or slowly?

You can test whether it is a software issue easily by just borrowing your friend’s keyboard for a day (agree to swap for 1 day with a warning that he or she will be frustrated during that time).

If you have it fine and he or she has it rough you know where to look.

If it is a hardware problem, take apart the keyboard and clean it. Get all of the crap that has built up over time out of there and wipe the rest down with a cleaning spray of your choice.

If that doesn’t fix it then nothing will and it is time for either a new keyboard or a call to MacGyver.

L. Spiro

I have this problem on wireless keyboards (programmer's burst typing rate can easily overwhelm wireless keyboard transfer rates).

I had to go back to buying wired ones, on which I've never had the problem.

Haven't checked the BIOS yet but if this gets any worse I'll happily reboot a few times to get it sorted.

This is not going to help because modern OSes completely ignore the BIOS settings at all, they just handle keyboard speed on their own (in fact this is needed in order to be able to set the keyboard speed from within the OS itself). Unless you're running DOS, that is.

...wait, is there any BIOS that lets you change the default keyboard speed?

I have this problem on wireless keyboards (programmer's burst typing rate can easily overwhelm wireless keyboard transfer rates).

I had to go back to buying wired ones, on which I've never had the problem.

Wireless keyboards are completely useless for me. I have not found a single one that didn't consistently drop key presses.

Yeah, I dated myself with the BIOS thing. Back in the day you could control things like keyrepeat suppression via the BIOS. I think one of my relatively less-ancient laptops still allows this.

Updating drivers didn't help noticeably.


I think I might just bring in a known-good keyboard tomorrow and see if it helps...

I found my keyboard in a bin and the keys work perfectly save ctrl

Good luck with the bios