Let my clarify:

 

Is it a PS2 keyboard, not wireless or USB. It does not appear to be a mechanical problem with the keyboard, cable or connector.

 

The problem appears once every couple of months and is always cured with a computer reboot without touching the cable or computer.  I think this rules out a mechanical problem. It could still be a problem with a particular application but I have not pinned it on a particular program. I will start making a list of every program I have open at the time it happens to see if I can pin it on only one. This may take a year to find! The mouse still works and allows me to do a clean reboot. Any other ideas?

 
In a message dated 5/15/2006 9:51:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

I have  an Emachine running Windows XP Home. Once in a while - fortunately,  
infrequently - my keyboard will go away. The computer (or Windows operating  
system) can't see it and the only way I can get things back to normal is to  
reboot the machine. I have been unable to figure out if it is related to a  
specific program or not, as I said it doesn't happen very often.

Does  anyone have a clue or, equally important, is there a way to recover the 
 keyboard without rebooting the machine? Sometimes when it quits, I am in 
Word  or notepad or some other program entering some sort of data and will lose 
some  of it. If I have saved the data before the problem I can use the mouse to 
save  what I have typed since then but, If I have just started to do 
something by  creating a new file, I cannot do a 'save as' and type in a file name and 
 simply have to reboot.

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