Certain key combinations won't work. It might work with the right ctrl key, but not the left. Characters in the upper left corner are sensitive. Sometimes they work better, sometimes worse. You have to push them hard to get them to go, often giving two presses. I took the back cover off and unplugged the FFC and tried to apply some deoxit to it to see if a better connection there would help, but it wasn't any different. I was surprised to see so many pins, but it is a backlit keyboard although I don't think the backlighting is per key or anything. Is anyone familiar with the failure conditions of these? Apparently to replace it I would first have to find one which doesn't seem to easy, and essentially every part including the system board has to be pulled to change it. Could it be an issue at the FFC connector possibly? I think that may be wishful thinking, but I wondered if anyone else has run into Dell keyboard issues.
Mechanical parts fault nothing with FFC, usually due to dust/dirt, age or tiny caps?
It has the flat style caps. Does anyone know if the keyboard has an actual keyboard controller in it, or if it is just a matrix and the keyboard controller is on the motherboard?
Laptop keyboards normally don't have any electronics in them.
It's just a matrix. And there is no way to fix it, you can only replace the keyboard if something is wrong with it.
Chicklet keyboards
its dubbed name, has taken over mechanical ones as the price is 1/7 lower of it
most if not all has its MC moved onto M/B