Solved Caps lock popup - Dell Inspiron 1545

Dell Inspiron 1545 notebook running Vista Home Premium. Automatic Updates is "on".

I suspect this is not strictly a Vista problem, but the user base may know of a solution. I also suspect the problem is with a Dell-specific service or application but that may be supported by underlying Vista services. I find references to a similar service for HP notebooks.

When I got my computer about 6 weeks ago, a transparent popup would appear briefly and then disappear when the caps lock key was toggled. It indicated the new state of the key and an icon was also placed in the Notification Area when the state was "locked".

A similar action took place if I toggled the "radio" button (F2) and a battery information window appeared it the "battery" key (F3) was pressed.

That worked for a week or so, then stopped working. I did many searches on The Internet and in the Dell Community Forums for a solution. No joy. Then one day, it mysteriously started working again. It worked for 3 days which spanned several times when the computer went into standby and when it went into hibernation each evening. A series of security updates came down from Microsoft which required reboot. The popups went away and in many more hours of research, I have been unable to find a solution. Miraculous "healing" has not recurred, either.

I finally contacted Dell Technical Support directly, which offered a download which I consider a "workaround" but could not (or would not) tell me how to restore the original action. The workaround placed full-time icons for caps lock and num lock in the Notification Area, but that does not alert me as well if I accidentally toggle the caps lock key which is critical when entering passwords, particularly "strong" ones. Since the 1545 has no number keypad, the icon for it is more of a nuisance than an aid. It also does not restore the action of the "radio" and "battery" keys.

I have looked at all the usual Control Panel suspects, including Keyboard (quite bare on this machine), the Taskbar and Start Menu, Personalization, System, and others. I have executed Dell quickset, which does not have a means to affect the problem. I have scanned the register and the configuration. Of course, I may have missed something in all that. I have run keyboard tests and the keys are functioning properly. I have found nothing to help.

Please help to identify the software in question and tell me how to reactivate it. Even if I had to do that any time the popups and icons disappeared, I would be a lot happier than I am now.

Dell has come through for me and I am happy again. I got a phone call in response to a letter to corporate headquarters outlining the problem.

The solution to the problem indeed involved Dell Quickset. For whatever reason, the keyboard-support portion of Quickset had become corrupted or disabled. Even more mysterious is that it “healed” for three days then fell apart again. I have to wonder if something was catching the keyboard interrupts and overriding the Quickset driver.

The eager-to-help lady who called had me download and install Quickset and everything works as it originally did. The popup comes and goes and if the status is locked, the icon appears in the Notification Area. The “radio button” also displays its popup and the “battery key” again brings up the Battery Meter window. It sure keeps me aware of what I have done to the Caps Lock key.

The software is well behaved and does not cause a change of focus on any of the software I have run since. I wonder if the users voicing concerns about that were using an earlier version of Quickset, or perhaps some software, maybe games, do switch focus. For me, the behavior is exactly what I want.

(I had come close to solving the problem myself in that I had downloaded the latest version of Quickset, but on noticing it was the same version as I was currently running I did not do the installation. As a matter of fact, when I saw that, I even uninstalled Quickset to see if that would help. It didn’t. Like they say, “Close only counts in ….”)

“How to” Steps…….
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Search for R197947.exe

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Download (I saved a copy to have it at hand in the event the problem recurred.), and then run the downloaded executable. Mine gave several warnings during the execution because Quickset was already on the computer, but it proceeded to install and worked properly.