Out of the ilk of human kindness Ditty and I decided to donate our old
laptops, one to a charity and the other to the couple next door, who are
compuphobes curious about what all this Internet stuff is all about. They
supplied a wireless card, and I got my old Dell Inspiron 7000 back up and
running, installed all the latest updates and was about to turn it over to
the neighbors when the keyboard started playing tricks, substituting numbers
and characters for the letters I was entering. I realized after a minute
that the keyboard was acting as though the Function key had been pressed,
enabling the keypad features. Sure enough, when I pressed the function key
the correct letters would be entered.

I've searched the Dell site and several others looking for a fix, but no
luck. Any suggestions for how to reverse the stuck Function key effect? The
laptop's not usable in its present form, especially for compuphobes.
-- Ernie