I researched all over the internet trying to find a solution, but nothing seemed to be working. A lot of sites say to hit the ‘reset’ button on the older models, however near as I can tell there is no reset button on the 1005PE models, and there is no mention of it in the manual.

So after an hour of searching and trying things that did not work, I went back to to the basics and low and behold I was able to get it to boot up again! Here is what I did:

1. Power off the laptop, unplug it from the power adapter and remove the battery.
2. Remove the cover where the memory is located, and remove the memory module.
3. Now firmly place the memory back in it’s slot. It’s important to note that these Netbooks seem to be very finicky about the seating of the memory and I had to do this several time before getting it ‘right’ and the Netbook would turn on. Do not put the cover back on the memory slot just yet, because you may be repeating these steps several times before getting it to work, and replacing the cover is annoying.
4. Hold the power button down for 30 seconds. Remember, the batter and power adapter should still be removed.
5. Now plug in the power adapter, and hit the power button once to turn on the Netbook.
6. At this point, if it worked, your Netbook has been fixed. Turn it back off, replace the batter, and the cover to the memory slot. IF IT DID NOT WORK, start over with step 3. As I said before, the Netbook is real sensitive and finicky with how the memory is seated, and it may take several attempts to get it right.

If after trying these steps several time, you still can’t get it to work, try the above steps again but using the original memory from your Netbook. It could be possible that the new memory is bad or not compatible with your Netbook. If you still can’t get your Netbook to turn on with the old memory then unfortunately you may need to get it serviced.

I run a dual boot system, so I also have Mandriva Linux on my laptop, which I use as my main operating system. I do not have this problem when I’m booted into Linux, so I knew the problem had to be Windows XP related.

Of course, this revelation also worried me, because I began to think I had some how got a virus, spyware, keylogger or some other nasty thing installed on my computer.

For weeks I ran all kinds of programs to ensure I did not have malware on my computer, everything from AVG antivirus, to Adaware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and all other recommendations I could find on the internet. Ever scan came back clean, and I was not infected with anything.

What could be causing my keystrokes to be randomly ignored? I started to think I might have a process or service running that was buggy. So I slowly and painfully disabled every non essential service, and started uninstalling all software. I even went as far as to start killing processes in the task manager that showed CPU usage as I was typing in notepad hoping I could catch a program that was trying to intercept my keystrokes.

Nothing worked, no matter what I deleted, uninstalled, or what process I killed the problem remained.

Tonight, out of pure frustration and one step away from wiping my Windows install and reinstalling it all, I did one last Google search. This time I search specifically for this problem on HP Pavilion zd8000 laptops. Low and Behold, I found a forum with other Pavilion zd8000 users having the same problem!

As it turns out, the faulty battery in my laptop, which died and quit holding a charge well over a year ago was the cause of the problem. The forum was filled with people saying to just pull the battery out and run the laptop off the a/c adapter only. That wouldn’t be a problem since my battery has been dead for so long I’ve been running only on the a/c adapter anyway.

After doing removing the battery, my keystrokes are back and working as normal! I figure it must be some Windows XP service that is trying to monitor the battery that is causing the keystroke hiccup (that doesn’t really make sense, but this is Windows we are dealing with, so go figure), but as of yet I haven’t found a way to solve the problem without removing the battery.

As long as the battery is out of the laptop though, I am typing like a champ!