Re: Severe Troll alert

From: Licensed to Quill (fountainpen_at_amexol.net)
Date: 11/07/04 

Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 17:11:31 -0500

Sorry for the DUHHHHH but that was blindingly obvious, hence the troll
alert, - I didn't mean to be gratuituously insulting!

Yes, I had tried the obvious things like deleting from device manager and
reinstalling and the whole reason I had posted was because it did
successfully re-install the standard PS2 keyboard and the internal keyboard
still doesn't work AND there is no keyboard driver at the Toshiba web site.
I posted because I wondered if anyone else had had this problem and knew the
cure (as opposed to because I needed anyone telling me to try asking Toshiba
how to cure a Toshiba computer) As far as TS is concerned, they just assume
that if you buy a TOshiba computer you have an IT department so they dont
need to provide technical support any more: To prove this, typically all
they ever say is "put the restore disc in and reboot your computer" (meaning
THAT should get you out of our hair for at least a month or so while you
discover that you have deleted all your software, all your data and all your
configurations because of the joke which we played on you)

So I wondered if anyone had ever come across a keyboard driver OF ANY TYPE
on the TOshiba site.

> Since it sounds like you still have the mouse to use, why not
> right-click on My Computer and select Manage (or start the Device
> Manager in Control Panel), delete the keyboard device, and reboot? The
> keyboard should be detected and reinstalled through hardware detection
> during Windows startup. If that doesn't work, delete the keyboard
> device and pick a generic one to see if the keyboard starts working
> again. Once you get the keyboard working with a standard driver, then
> go to Toshiba's web site to download their latest driver for it, if they
> provide one. Maybe they just rely on the standard keyboard driver
> embedded in Windows.
>
> When you say, "DUHHHH", that implies you looked but there was no
> keyboard driver for your model of their product. Is that actually true,
> have you yet bothered to even look? It would take us as long as it
> would take you to go look on their web site for a driver. Actually it
> would take us longer because we would have to make many guesses at which
> model you have within the Satellite family and look at many tech
> articles to get a consensus of what Toshiba does for drivers. You never
> told us the model you have. You should know what Satellite model you
> have and so you can do the search yourself (start at
> http://snipurl.com/agnz).
>
> "I was told to delete some keys from the registry ...". Who told you
> this? Did they not mention to first export the keys so you could
> restore them in case their deletion caused problems? Maybe that person
> assumed you knew how to use the registry editor and would backup what
> you were going to delete.
>
> "Toshiba doesn't seem to provide technical support for this." So what
> did they say when you called them?
>
> DRI_KBFiltr. That doesn't look like a keyboard driver file to me,
> especially with the "filter" string in its name. It looks more like
> some additional utility that probably chained itself into the keyboard
> driver. I also have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed. My keyboard
> driver is the generic "Easy Internet Keyboard" (probably because Windows
> detected volume, mute, and home page keys). My keyboard is connected to
> the PS/2 keyboard connector on the backpanel. A search on my computer
> does not turn up this filename. What happens when you run msconfig.exe
> to disable all startup programs and reboot? What happens if you reboot
> into Safe mode?

Doesn't assist (Microsoft told me it wouldn't)
>
> If you cannot get the system working again as is, then you might end up
> have to perform an in-place upgrade that steps atop your current install
> (and then reapply SP-2); see http://support.microsoft.com/?id=315341,
> method 2, Repair.

I did think of backing out of SP2 and reinstalling to see if it would
restore the keyboard drivers and then upgrade the proper ones to SP2 on
re-re-installation but wondered if there was an easier way like trying some
Toshiba keyboard driver or if anyone knew how to reinstall "a program called
Easy Button" ( SP2 had to be installed three or four times before it took
and then only with Microsoft's assistance during the course of a two hour
call)
>
> A Google search on "DRI_KBFiltr" turned up 94 matches, and the first one
> that was shown in the match list might help you
> (http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBM/tip6200/rh6277.htm).
That sort of message made me think that even if there isnt a keyboard driver
for the special toshiba keyboard for my computer wihch admitttedly DOES have
some special keys, there might be one for SOME toshiba keyboards which might
get my computer working again? The trouble is (and this is another reason
for that DUHHHHHH) that having dicontinued TS, their search engine is so
useless that searching the Toshiba web site for a keyboard driver reveals
nothing (I suspect there may well be one somewhere which is, again, why I
posted here). The advice I was given to get rid of the (harmless) error
message was to delete something called EZKEYBOARD from add/remove programs
as well as some keys in the registry. I didnt back up because I thought I
could rely on the SYstem Restore to get back to the day before's registry:
(SYstem restore now doesnt work as I mentioned)

A Google Groups search
> on "DRV_Filtr" (quoted to ensure the underscore got included) turned up
> 391 matches. I have no idea on what you searched when using Google or
> Google Groups. You said you got 16,000 matches. That's 33 times the
> total matches that I got in Google and Google Groups. By the
> description in the JSIINC article, it sure looks like I was on the money
> that you have something MORE installed to provide additional features
> for your keyboard than just the standard keyboard driver. It seems
> weird that Toshiba would be using a 3rd party keyboard utility to get
> full support for their embedded keyboard - unless, of course, it was
> something you installed yourself.

(You are undoubtedly correct: unfortunately experience shows that it would
be even weirder if anyone at Toshiba knew anything about it)

Quantcast