[finwood]

I have a 3 year old Dell with Windows XP. I keep my computer on most all of the time. It is set to go to sleep, and shutdown the hard drive after about 30 minutes of inactivity. Lately, it has been really hard to wake up.
I have to pound on the keyboard, and wiggle the mouse for at least 45 seconds before it springs to life. The other night I had a key stick. I've blown out the crumbs, tightened the connections, etc. Should I buy another keyboard, or is it something with the hard drive?

 

[Jones]

Do you have access to another keyboard you can try before you run out and get another one? Perhaps borrow a friends?

Also, have you done the regular system maintenance? ex: Disk defrag, disk cleanup, etc.?

 

[finwood]

Yes, I do all of that, and exchanging keyboards is a good idea. I'll just switch keyboards with my husbands computer and see if it does the same thing. I hope it is the keyboard, although I have never had one go bad.

 

[Jones]

It might be a good idea to do the system maintenance I mentioned if it hasn't been done in a while. It helps keep things clean and responsive, at least a little bit.