Ubuntu – Keys malfunctioning – ctrl and shift seem to be pressed when they aren’t, or don’t work when pressed

14.04keyboard

I have a fresh Ubuntu 16.04 install on a new laptop (less than a month old) and I'm having a hard time with my keyboard.

It seems like the Ctrl key thinks it's being pressed when it's not. Some examples:

  1. On Chrome, when I scroll up or down with the mouse the zoom suddenly changes, the same happens in Sublime Text.
  2. When typing d on a terminal it suddenly closes the current tab.

The above examples happened at random intervals.

Sometimes, when I actually want to use the Ctrl key and press it to delete a word on the terminal (using Ctrl+w) it only works the first or second time, then it suddenly stops working (while holding down the Ctrl).

It's not just the Ctrl key because sometimes happens with the Alt key too.

What I have tried:

  • Deleting the .config, .gconf, .gnome and .gnome2 folders as suggested in a post I found
  • Changing the Keyboard Layout
  • On my keyboard settings, the "Key presses repeat when key is held down" is checked
  • The "Sticky keys" option is off.

My laptop:

  • HP Pavilion
  • AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 1 TB HDD
  • Ubuntu Mate 16.04

Extra info:

  • I'm using gnome-session-fallback as my DE.
  • I'm using fglrx driver as an alternative to X.org

Update

  • It's happening with the Shift keys too
  • It's happening with both the left and right Ctrl, Shift, etc. keys so I guess we can discard hardware failures as suggested by @whtyger in the comments

Best Answer

I've the same problem on HP Pavilion 15 ab062nl. CPU AMD A10 8700p, GPU radeon r6 + radeon r7 m360, RAM: 8GB DDR3.

Try pressing only Left_SHIFT Key. On my notebook this fixes the problem for a while

problem with SHIFT, CTRL and ALT button with integrated keyboard

I've also opened a bug on launchpad

You can add yourself as affected or create a new bug if you think yours is different.

In my opinion it's a problem of compatibility with these HP Keyboards.

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