I noticed that a few months ago, something strange has happened to the keyboard input on my Windows 8.1 . I don't know if this is caused by undetectable malwares or certain buggy Windows updates. As I have disabled the backup feature on Windows, I cannot recover my system to how it was a few months ago.
Actually there are several keyboard input issues but one of the biggest problems which affects my everyday use is that, when I press and hold my Windows/Start key on my keyboard for more than a second, the key repeats, just like other character keys. If it does not sound strange enough to you, let me repeat myself: my Win key repeats when held.
On a NORMAL Windows 8/8.1 machine, when you press and hold down the Win key on the keyboard, nothing should happen on screen. But when you release the Win key, the Start screen should appear.
On my computer, when I press and hold down the Win key on the keyboard, nothing happens for about a second... and then after a second or so, as the key is still held down, the Start screen flashes! The screen looks like as if the key is tapped repeatedly and very quickly.
This behaviour is very much like a normal character key on the keyboard - like when you press and hold the "A" key, the keyboard types "A" once on screen, and then as you hold the key for a fraction of second longer, the keyboard repeatedly types "A" many times on screen until you releases the key.
To my understanding, the Windows/Start key, under normal circumstances, should not repeats when held down, just like a Ctrl, Alt and Context Menu key! If the holding issue doesn't sound bad enough for you, then please read on...
Before this problem was discovered, I use some of the Windows shortcut key combination quite a lot. For example, when I used to press Win + D, all the windows on my screen should minimize and the desktop will be shown straight away. BUT now, when I press Win + D, the Start screen appears! If I don't release the Win key but press D for the second time, the Start screen disappears and I see all my opened windows again. And when I press D for the third time (while the Win key is still held down), I then see the desktop as expected. This is pretty troublesome to someone like me who is dependent on shortcut keys for everyday operations. Of course, Win + D is only ONE of the shortcut problems related to the Win key. There are also problems with other shortcut combinations, like Win + W, Win + C, etc...
I have tried many different keyboards and made sure it isn't a hardware problem. I have also tried killing off some of the running processes just to make sure it is not really a malware issues, but I have no luck with that. I have searched the web and I
could not find anyone with similar issues. I had played around different settings on my computer but nothing helped. I have tried installing/uninstalling different locale input methods, but I don't think the input methods has anything to do with my Win key.
There is one thing I noticed though. When I go to Control Panel > Keyboard and change the settings for the keys' repeat delay and keys' repeat rate, the repeat setting doesn't only apply to my normal character keys, but also to the Win key! So in a way, this repeat settings are shared by both normal character keys and the Win key. For the time being, I have increased the repeat delay so that the shortcut combinations can be executed in time before the repeat starts occuring. However, this workaround also affects me negatively when I want a shorter delay on my other ordinary keys, for example, holding an arrow key to scroll a web page.
I am not exactly sure the cause of this but with my years of experience in using Windows, I feel that this is a problem within the OS instead of a third-party software/hardware issue.
Thank you in advance for any help and suggestions! Really appreciated!
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