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Part of the 15 series in Dell’s Inspiron notebook line, the 3520 model was released on October 18, 2012. The Dell Inspiron 3520 is a 15 inch laptop that is both affordable and capable of meeting a variety of needs.

Some keyboard keys work and stop randomly

Hello,

I have a newer model on Dell Inspiron 3520 (purchased in 2023), and several keys stopped working:

  • keys: Z, X, C, V, M, , , ., Enter, 5, 6
  • Sometimes they worked if I start continuously pressing that key hard or didn’t move the laptop, but now they almost never work.
  • There has never been any water damage on the laptop.
  • In the BIOS diagnostic test, these keys also fail (so I believe it’s definitely not a Windows/Linux driver issue).
  • If the keys stop responding completely, I sometimes have to do a kind of “ritual”: pressing Z, X, C, etc. (that whole line) hard, several times in a row. After that, they may start working again for a while , but not properly.
  • After a restart, they occasionally come back for a short time, but the problem always returns.

I’ve never seen a keyboard problem behave like this. If the keyboard trace was physically broken, I would expect the keys to stop working completely but here they randomly start and stop working.

Before I replace the entire keyboard, I’d like to pinpoint the exact cause and be sure I’ve tried everything (I also want to avoid adding unnecessary e-waste).

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Well you can try the following:

  • Check in BIOS or during boot
  • External keyboard test
  • Clean the keyboard
  • Update / reinstall drivers

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