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Summary: Windows has an accessibility feature that's very easy to turn on by mistake that changes the behaviour of your shift key and others.
Help! My Shift key is stuck!
Have you ever gotten so frustrated with your computer that you just start randomly pounding on the keyboard or perhaps a particular key?
Yeah, me too.
And that's likely the source of the problem here. No, Windows isn't getting even with you though it might seem that way. It actually thinks you've asked it to do something.
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Windows XP includes what are known as "accessibility options" that are designed to make the computer more useable by people with various physical challenges. (Prior Windows versions include similar functionality but I'll focus on the XP specifics here.) Several of those options relate to the keyboard and are fairly easily enabled.
Let's say you're frustrated with your work and start pounding on the shift key (or as was my case alternately pounding on both shift keys). If Windows sees the shift key pressed five times in a row it assumes you're asking for a feature called "Sticky Keys". This feature makes the Shift, Alt, Ctrl, and Windows keys toggle instead of needing to be held down. Windows does throw up a confirmation dialog but that's easy to miss if you're still pounding your keys and happen to hit Return.
Maybe you're not that violent. Perhaps you're just lost in thought as your finger slowly descends on the Shift key. 8 seconds later Windows thinks you've asked for something called "Filter Keys" which is a way to ignore brief keystrokes or repeated keystrokes. If it's the Num Lock key you've held down for 5 seconds Windows will ask you about something called "Toggle Keys" which beeps a tone whenever you press Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, or Num Lock.
To be fair Windows does try to ask before turning on one of these features, but if you hit Return by mistake and the feature gets turned on it can be frustrating to try and continue to get work done if you didn't realize what happened. And that of course can lead to more keyboard pounding.
The good news is that they're easy to turn off and it's also easy to turn off the detection that got you into trouble in the first place. If your keyboard is in one of these strange states I suggest using the mouse and selecting: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Accessibility Options. The default panel that comes up will in fact be for the keyboard options. There you can turn off whatever happened to have been turned on. While you're there for each of the three options, press Settings, and uncheck Use Shortcut. Now Windows will no longer misinterpret your random keystrokes.
Pound away.
Article C1855 - October 28, 2003
My keyboard will not type until I hold the shift key down for 15 seconds until it does a long beep, then keyboard works fine????? Why is this? How can I rectify it?
Posted by: Karen Dale at March 9, 2009 7:56 AMI have a PC with windows XP but my problem is that somehow my shift key combination of Shift +2 or +3 have now different signs. It now shows double quotes and the pound sign respectively. There are other combination errors too. And I don't know how to correct them to the default settings. Tried everything. Help. On screen keyboard through accessibility option, too, shows the erratic key combination
Posted by: Pree at March 10, 2009 2:26 PMTo unlock Shift Key : First verify that Control Panel Accessibilities to Sticky keys and the like are turned off. Second press and hold down left shift key. DONE
Posted by: Lisa at April 21, 2009 11:54 AMSame thing happened to me when I accidently held my shift key too long. Difficult to navigate w/some keyboard features inop & w/"sticky keys" & "filter keys" enabled. I wound up using "system restore" to an earlier restore point by navigating w/a partial mouse and lt/rt/up/dn keys. It worked.
Posted by: Ken Pukenis at April 22, 2009 7:29 PMMy left shift key uppercase some letter or symbol and the right shift key uppercase letter or symbol the left shift key wont.So now I have to use left and right shift key to uppercase different groups of letters and symbol. I red about solving the problem but nothing is happening when I do what you,Leo suggested in your post. Is this some different issue here? Please help me if you can ( I know you can because I see you are the Anstain with these problems :)
Posted by: Shon at May 8, 2009 3:33 PMokay, i cant press my shft key at all. i fix sticky key and everything already. when i hold down my shift key it beeps and if i continue the beep continues too. ctrl and alt works perfectly fine but its just shift that dont work. i dont understand and im confuse, why it makes this beep when i hold down on it. so please help me asap. thank you.
Posted by: Sunjong at May 28, 2009 7:45 PMCould you please tell me how to resolve the problem with the keys Q-A-Z & 1,WHY THEY ARE STICKING,SHOULD JUST BE ABLE TO TOUCH THE LETTERS AND THEY COME UP,I TOSHIBA LAP TOP,SHOULD I SEND IT BACK TO TOSHIBA//?
Thankyou
Posted by: Ray Chismore at June 3, 2009 10:08 AMi have a Toshiba Laptop ,& my capS lock is stuck ....... i always have to push ShifT to make them litte again .... its anoyying & Sometimes my backSpace doesnt work . Can SOmeone HELp me!!!??? >:( ,im 13 o_O
05-Jun-2009
my space bar and shift keys arent working. also, letters t, b, y, n when pressed, brings up different letters at the same time. pls what can i do?
Posted by: Ivie at June 5, 2009 5:59 AMTo turn off the toggle keys (or whichever one you can turn on by accidentally holding down the right shif key too long) just press both shift keys simultaneously.
Posted by: Liza at June 16, 2009 7:35 AM