What is Man?

Yesterday mom called me to look at her computer. At first it seemed like an easy fix. A window kept popping up on the screen at random intervals. I figured it was a stuck key. After checking up on the internet I found out that the particular window popping up, “arrange favorites,” was activated by CTRL-B in Internet Explorer. I asked mom and she said that it was also randomly bolding letters in MS Word, also activated by CTRL-B. Well, that had me scratching my head… I have never seen two buttons stick like that at the same time. Mom also said her Lenovo had been doing this for some time, but last night it started doing it constantly,to the point where IE was unusable.

I pulled off the keys and cleaned under them, though at this point I suspected it was something hardware related. That didn’t fix it, so I figured I’d go for broke and pulled off the keyboard completely and disconnected it from the motherboard. It STILL did it. So now I tried the software side of thing. Safe mode: still doing it. Virus and ad-ware scan, nada. I decided to see if there were keyboard drivers on Lenovo’s website and while I did this, mom’s computer stopped having random key-presses. I set my tablet down and her computer started doing it again. WHAT in the WORLD?!!! I started moving the laptop around to see if there was something loose, disconnecting peripherals, etc. Still doing it. I propped my computer back up in front of hers. The key presses stopped. Hmm. I started looking around and I saw this strange clear green electronic device on the table. It had a couple of infrared emitters and a tiny red LED. I moved it away from the laptop and the problem stopped.

I suddenly remembered that the Lenovo Y510 has an infrared port in front. To test my theory, I got a remote from the living room and and aimed at the laptop. “Arrange Favorites” popped up. Whoa! I looked this up today on Lenovo’s website and apparently even some bright incandescent lights can cause it. The port interprets infrared noise as keystrokes. The synopsis: While mom was in the living room, the remotes would occasionally get a good bounce and hit the infrared port. The green thing was a personnel tracker the hospital uses. She accidentally brought it hope, and when she set it on the table next to her laptop in the kitchen it had line of sight to her infrared port. Every time it transmitted, it activated CTRL-B. How wacky is that?