full of … these

Fix slow keyboard on Dell Inspiron 1501

Posted: January 7th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: fun, howto | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 84 Comments »

One of my colleague asked me to take a look at her laptop and check why the characters appear so slow sometimes.
At that moment I thought it’s a software issue. After several checks we reinstalled the XP but the problem persisted. So, we sent the notebook to the service.
After one month, we received it untouched with the following resolution: please reinstall the OS :) .
Ok then…

So I started to investigate by killing unneeded processes.
I have started with ati2evxx.exe.
I was lucky, after two days of tests it seems that this was the problem.
The exe is started by a service named ati hotkey poller (I can’t remember exactly right now).
This process is installed together with the Ati driver (catalyst).
I have changed the service settings to not start at boot time (it cannot be stopped) and rebooted.

The problem was resolved.

On another dell inspiron 1501, but with newer drivers, in the control center the hot key service is disabled by default. In the version from the CD with the drivers, the hot key service is enabled by default.

Update 1: Show me your happy face! if this works for you, you saved at least 500 euro…
Leave a comment if this fixed your laptop.

Update 2:

Edwin suggested below that the cause of this lag is because your batter is too old and you should replace it.
To test it, remove the battery and start your Dell.

If the battery replacement fixed the problem please leave a comment.

84 Comments on “Fix slow keyboard on Dell Inspiron 1501”

  1. 1Sean said at 10:35 am on January 26th, 2009:

    How dd you change the service for the ati2evxx.exe? HOw do you stop it from running? I have the driver and the process runs when I startup and want to see if that fixes it for me. You can email me with a response. Thx!

  2. 2paul said at 11:20 am on January 26th, 2009:

    Open services from control panel (click start->Run-> enter services.msc-> Hit Enter).
    Double click the service and change the startup type to Manual (from Automatic).
    Reboot.
    If you want it back as it was, change it to Automatic.

  3. 3Pablo said at 4:23 am on February 10th, 2009:

    Thank you! Man you are the best!!!!
    Your post help me with many inspiron notebooks
    Thank you very very much!! :-)

  4. 4paul said at 6:33 am on February 10th, 2009:

    You are welcome!

  5. 5Jim said at 3:52 am on February 21st, 2009:

    Wow! Thanks! I have been trying to figure this out for a long time. I tried everything…defrag, anti-virus, spyware, ect. Finally I called Dell and was paying for their tech support. 4 hours on the phone and trying all kinds of things (he was working my computer remotely) the tech had me unintall Windows and told me to buy new ram and then reinstall Windows. It was fixed until I loaded video driver. Being persistant, I searched the web and found your blog. You ARE the man! Thanks!!!
    Maybe you can figure this one out…I have to click “turn off computer” twice before it will shut down. My first request for shut down does nothing. I can still use computer as if I hadn’t tried to shut down. Second time I click on “turn off computer” it shuts down perfectly. Any ideas? Even if you don’t, you’re still my hero. THANKS!

  6. 6paul said at 9:13 am on February 21st, 2009:

    You are welcome!
    Google did it, I just wrote it.

    And it looks like dell tech support doesn’t read my posts :)

    Regarding your problem with shutdown I’m sure mighty google will help you again :)
    http://www.google.com/search?q=twice+turn+off+computer

    Cheers!

  7. 7John said at 11:20 pm on February 26th, 2009:

    Hey thanks for this tip xD I was like: “What in the WORLD is this?” when I reinstalled my XP several times, puzzled. Then I tried installing drivers one by one to see which one causes this – and indeed, it was the graphic driver. I tried the newest version and everything, but it wasn’t until I had discovered your blog that I managed to deal with it!

    I feel so ashamed :P I shoulda’ been able to deal with it myself xD

  8. 8jack adams said at 9:36 pm on February 28th, 2009:

    Thanks a lot

  9. 9Ian said at 4:38 pm on March 9th, 2009:

    Thankyou very much for this!
    I had performed a full clean install of Win XP including C: partition format to try as a last resort to rectify this exact problem on a Dell Inspiron 1501. After installing the ATI graphics drivers, the keyboard lag was back! I found your blog after a quick google, and after disabling the ATI Hotkey Poller service all is now well!!

  10. 10Keddie said at 5:30 pm on March 11th, 2009:

    Yes I did it too, do the restart after you turn that ati to manual and you can type really quick now wooo hooooooo
    I wasnt able to find it till you hit properties ati HotKey Poller thats the one you want. awsome

    Wow dell sure knows when your warranty is up.

  11. 11paul said at 5:59 pm on March 11th, 2009:

    Dell know very well about this. Thanks for the tip.

  12. 12Matthew said at 8:21 am on March 17th, 2009:

    This is unbelieveable! It actually worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  13. 13Benoitx said at 11:15 pm on March 17th, 2009:

    You’re my hero
    Ty

  14. 14JimTaverner said at 2:12 pm on March 21st, 2009:

    My sincere thanks for your advise re:keyboard delay on Dell Laptop 1501.I’ve been
    trying to sort out the problem after formatting Drive C: on my granddaughter’s laptop.Everything now OK.The only thing I don’t understand is that the problem was there before I formatted (to get rid of huge amount of junk left by ‘iffy’ teenage downloads). I wonder how the fault developed in the first place. Anyway, thanks again.
    Cheers,
    Jim Taverner,Cardiff, Wales

  15. 15Marat said at 5:49 am on March 22nd, 2009:

    I was going crazy about this keyboard issue.
    Your tip solved the problem quickly!
    Thanks a lot.

  16. 16paul said at 9:02 am on March 22nd, 2009:

    I think it’s intentionally.

  17. 17Marge said at 2:20 am on March 30th, 2009:

    I just re-installed Windows and all the drivers and I was amazed that the problem persisted. Thanks for the post. Much apprecieted,

  18. 18Vonkie said at 8:19 pm on April 4th, 2009:

    This has been driving me crazy for ages! Finally it’s fixed now. A big thanks from Amsterdam

  19. 19Claudio_Valencia said at 3:49 am on April 14th, 2009:

    Hola desde México!!!
    Estube con el mismo problema que ustedes. Recien encontre la solucion en otra pagina, pero comento aqui. Por si es que algun latino no encuentra respuestas en español (como yo que no encontre). Para solucionar el retrazo en el teclado al momento de escribir en una inspiron haga lo siguiente:
    1.- Clic en Inicio y clic en Ejecutar
    2.- Escriba services.msc y presione Enter
    3.- De clic derecho sobre ATi HotKey Poller y seleccione Propiedades
    4.- Donde dice “Tipo de inicio:” escoja la opcion Deshabilitado
    5.- Reinicie y pruebe su teclado
    6.- Chingese un Tequila y corra por su casa presumiendole a todos que su inspiron funciona sin problemas

    palabras clave: Problemas con inspiron 1501, 1150, etc. ATi Hotkey Poller, Adaptadores de pantalla ATI Radeon Xpress 1150, controlador de video para inspiron, falla controlador de video inspiron.

  20. 20paul said at 7:19 am on April 14th, 2009:

    Gracias Claudio!

    Gracias por la traducción!

    ¡Hasta luego!

  21. 21Ric and Nic said at 11:04 pm on April 15th, 2009:

    YOU ARE AMAZING
    I have spent 2 years looking for the fix for it and my girlfriend said look on google
    so i did, clicked on your post and i was like “WHATT!?”
    so i tried it, and it worked!

    YOU
    ARE
    THE BESTESTTTT!

  22. 22Scott said at 11:21 pm on April 15th, 2009:

    This problem was driving me nuts in classes, causing me to fall way behind on what the professor was lecturing, and in less than two minutes, your solution cleared this problem right up! I was going crazy trying to figure it out, thank you so much for post a solution to this!

  23. 23Jan said at 6:06 pm on April 18th, 2009:

    Hi and many thanks indeed for the solution. I googled and *finally* found your blog. the others just suggested worms etc. I also reinstalled xp and all the drivers :-/ Whew, i wish i’d found your authority before. :-)

  24. 24Bruno said at 6:16 am on May 7th, 2009:

    Well well well… Problem solved on my Dell 1501 (ati2evxx.exe set to manual)…

    My problem began on the first tuesday of May, day of updates for Microsoft… Strange…

    Many thanks to you!

  25. 25Alex said at 5:06 pm on May 14th, 2009:

    Thank you very much for the solution, it works just fine!

    The only thought that bothers me is a question why my laptop has been working just OK for more than two years and then slowed down? I have two Windows XP SP2 systems on different partitions, one is up to date for everyday use and another is in “clean”, “just installed” condition just to test sites in IE6 from time to time. I haven’t reinstalled them for more than a year and I use the second, “clean” one pretty rare. But one day they both slowed down, how could this happen? I can guess that the up-to-date system was affected by some Windows update, but the “clean” one hasn’t been updated. The same ATI driver suddenly started to slow down my keyboarding one day?…

    Please share your ideas. Thanks again!!

    Alex.

  26. 26paul said at 5:31 pm on May 14th, 2009:

    I think it’s designed to be like this.
    I have no idea how it’s done: BIOS?, modify system date?
    I do not own a dell inspiron 1501 anymore so I cannot test this…

  27. 27alpedoc said at 10:30 pm on May 14th, 2009:

    awesome… Easy as it is…
    Thank you so much…

  28. 28Johan Nyberg said at 8:07 am on May 16th, 2009:

    I was going to go and buy a new laptop today, I’m not kidding! I’m quite proficient with a computer (I work as a web developer), but I have tried for a week to find a solution to this (re-install of Windows, removing and recreating boot partition, anti-malware, anti-spyware, Dell diagnostics software – the lots!) but it wasn’t until I found your post that I could solve the problem. Many, many thanks from Stockholm, Sweden.

  29. 29Logan said at 12:27 pm on May 20th, 2009:

    Paul -

    I am a writer by trade, and having a keyboard take three seconds to type one letter would’ve done a lot more than 500 Euros (though it’s in dollars for me) of damage.

    Your quick and easy solution saved me a lot of heartache. Thanks so much.

  30. 30Edwin said at 11:54 pm on May 28th, 2009:

    Lots of people with a Dell Inspiron have an issue with keyboard lag and slow response.
    I don’t know if it is allready mentioned here, but the battery is the issue!
    Take the battery out and run it on the power adapter. No lag and better performance.
    And replace battery off course.

    Regards,

    Edwin

  31. 31Justin said at 9:19 am on June 2nd, 2009:

    You are so right man it is the battery…!!

  32. 32Brian Moore said at 5:18 am on June 9th, 2009:

    I love you!!! LOL Thanks so much. That was so aggravating. You are truly a computer genious. Ati and Dell need to pay you. Why couldn’t they discover that? My world of warcraft game was hard to play because of this problem but now it’s great.

  33. 33Jelena said at 1:19 am on June 15th, 2009:

    thank you so so so so so so so much. switching from automatic to manual worked perfectly fine for my Inspiron 1501. Though I think that battery in my computer is slowly dying….

  34. 34Lyndhurst Bodden said at 7:40 am on June 15th, 2009:

    Thank you so much for the info on stopping the ati2evxx.exe process. It fixed my problem. I had already spent several hours working on the problem with the keyboard responding slow on my Dell Inspiron 1501 and was about to reinstall Windows XP when I decided to check Google for possible solutions. You saved me quite a few hours of additional work.

  35. 35Piotr said at 5:32 pm on June 27th, 2009:

    Thanks master!
    You saved my afternoon and the computer of my father…

  36. 36Luke said at 12:30 pm on July 1st, 2009:

    You’re a complete genuis!
    I have been given a friends laptop to fix. This is an inspiron 1501.
    I thought re-installing Windows would solve the problem, which it did until i installed the ATI drivers.
    I read your post and have disabled the ATI hotkey utility. This has done the trick.
    Thank you very much.

  37. 37Avi said at 4:11 pm on July 16th, 2009:

    YESSSSSS! You’re freaking awesome, I’ve been troubleshooting this for months, to the point I completely stopped using my laptop.
    Thank you soooooo much!

  38. 38marijn said at 6:24 am on July 22nd, 2009:

    I just fixed the problem by removing the battery from the laptop. Thanks for the suggestion.

  39. 39CTP said at 12:36 am on July 28th, 2009:

    Thank you very much. This problem was driving me insane for almost 2 weeks. I am so glad i found this entry.

  40. 40Spencer said at 6:19 am on August 22nd, 2009:

    Thanks to Edwin – my daughter’s Dell 1501 was very slow responding and we had been talking by phone since she is in college in another state. I told her about the battery and she removed it and the computer is fixed. Thanks again.

  41. 41Jim said at 5:21 am on August 31st, 2009:

    I am having EXTREME lag problems with itunes. I’ve tried many things with no success. Do you think the old battery issue and the “ani hotkey poller” fix could resolve my issue?
    Thanks
    Jim

  42. 42paul said at 8:12 am on August 31st, 2009:

    It could, start it without the battery. The other problem could be a bad harddrive. Please check SMART information of your drive.

  43. 43Jim said at 5:17 pm on August 31st, 2009:

    Thanks Paul. How do I check the SMART information?

  44. 44paul said at 5:27 pm on August 31st, 2009:

    Try with smartmontools for windows: http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/
    or, a more smple one, “hdd health” from http://www.panterasoft.com/

  45. 45neowulff said at 2:32 am on September 14th, 2009:

    Woah! Killed the process and it fixed the problem. that is SO awesome. Could have saved myself the System Restore and just killed a process to fix this annoying problem! I downloaded and updated EVERY driver on Dell’s Support site for this laptop. Thank you for this fix!

  46. 46TechGuy said at 10:21 am on September 14th, 2009:

    I can not believe there is still no official statement on dell’s support site about this.
    I reinstalled a customers system… just to find out its the damn ati service! Thanks to you i can now restore the backed up system and just disable the service. :-) !

  47. 47bogdan said at 12:57 am on September 23rd, 2009:

    Thanks a lot for the information….It fixed my problem…and saved me a lot of time….I found your post in 10 seconds.The strange fact is that i installed many times the drivers from the same dvd and only recently this problem showed up…anyway….thanks again..great fix:)

  48. 48Stephen said at 3:46 am on September 25th, 2009:

    Resolved the problem by taking out the battery. Thanks.

  49. 49VDM said at 7:48 pm on October 1st, 2009:

    YEah!! that did the trick ;) thanks!

  50. 50Momofthree said at 2:46 am on October 19th, 2009:

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I cannot tell you how long I have been trying to figure out this problem. Once I ended the ati2evxx.exe process, my keyboard started working normally again. You are amazing!

  51. 51ryan said at 7:40 am on November 9th, 2009:

    it wont let me turn mine to manual its like locked?

  52. 52paul said at 7:29 pm on November 9th, 2009:

    @ryan: use the Administrator account

  53. 53Zoltan said at 8:55 pm on November 10th, 2009:

    removing battery fixed my problem also.
    thanks a lot :)
    advise: first ask, lookup on google than remove OS.
    luckily it is ubuntu :)

  54. 54Marc said at 11:20 pm on November 10th, 2009:

    Thanks a lot! Your advise solved my problem!!

    ( Unfortunately, I already reinstalled Windows and have now to reinstall all the programs… But well.. at least the problem’s solved now :-) )

  55. 55Sanjay said at 2:16 am on November 15th, 2009:

    Thank you! Dell tech support had no clue what the problem was. In fact, they told me that I needed to upgrade my RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB in Windows XP. I told them where they could go based on my experience with a 6 year old laptop with XP and 512 MB RAM that runs silky smooth. I knew it was going to be something like this.

  56. 56Dan said at 4:48 pm on December 7th, 2009:

    The tip to remove the old battery saved me! So simple! That’s why you gotta love Google. After hours of trying to solve the problem, it took me 2 minutes to find the tip, try it and solve it. Fantastic.

  57. 57Bob said at 11:44 pm on December 19th, 2009:

    Thanks soooo much for the great assistance!!

    Our old Dell Inspiron 1501 had the same horrible keyboard lagging problem. Was driving me nuts – figured it was a keylogger or something.

    Disabling the ati hotkey polling service did the trick!

    The battery was also dead, so I pulled that and things improved even more. So, the 1501 has some strange hardware issue where the laptop cannot fully bypass a dead battery.

    We will replace the battery and keep using the machine. It makes a fine knock around laptop for web, tv watching and email.

    Thanks for the great help!!!!!

  58. 58Fidel said at 3:47 pm on January 6th, 2010:

    Phew !!! I spent 1 day opening my 3 year old laptop up (for the first time), dusting it, reinstalled Win XP OS, and somewhere in between while re-installing the drivers, I got the same problem again ! Thanks to your post. I should have figured this out myself (Considering that the text entry on the windows login window was never problematic I should have figured out that the problem is definitely with some process that comes into existence after logging in !!!) Thanks again :)

  59. 59Cyril said at 10:14 pm on January 8th, 2010:

    My neighbour had the some problems on his inspiron 1501. The time lag using the keyboard and regular ‘ hang’ of IE and/or system. I removed the add-in and the battery (completely dead). Both symptoms gone!

    Thanks!

  60. 60Kamil said at 9:08 pm on January 9th, 2010:

    Paul, thank you so much for this solution!
    It helps.

    Thank you.

  61. 61Johan said at 2:01 pm on February 8th, 2010:

    Hello, the battery thing worked. Now my 6400 works perfect again. Great thanks!

  62. 62Andrei said at 8:48 pm on April 3rd, 2010:

    It works ..Thank you very much.

  63. 63David said at 3:45 pm on May 26th, 2010:

    Worked. Thanks for the time saver.

  64. 64shinta said at 5:41 pm on May 31st, 2010:

    thanks a lot Paul, you save my life :)

  65. 65Seba said at 6:29 pm on August 13th, 2010:

    Gracias desde Chile!
    (thanks from Chile!)

  66. 66tavi said at 2:47 am on September 23rd, 2010:

    Removing the battery solves this annoying problem !

  67. 67Ale said at 10:12 am on October 9th, 2010:

    Man!!! you are a GENIUS!!!
    I was getting crazy and frustrated with my lap…

    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! REALY THANKS!!!

    =)

  68. 68Ale said at 10:16 am on October 9th, 2010:

    just a question… how did you find the solution of the hotkey??

  69. 69paul said at 10:43 am on October 9th, 2010:

    I was testing the problem with a linux live cd (ubuntu) and it didn’t reproduced. So it was clear that the problem is in the OS. From here, it was easy to kill processes. :)

    Cheers!

  70. 70Leo said at 8:21 am on October 15th, 2010:

    Many here have Dell pcs. I’ve Toshiba Satellite with the same keyboard problem in addition to an erratic mouse shuffling all over. I updated drives but problems persisted and later told I’ve a corrupt touchpad that needed to be replaced. Wooo! A ton of thanks! You save me a bundle, Paul.

  71. 71Morf said at 8:08 am on November 3rd, 2010:

    removing the battery on my wife’s inspiron 1501 solved the problem.
    after week’s of brain damage:)

    Paul you are the Man:D
    tons of respect from Moldova!

  72. 72Andreas said at 10:16 pm on November 29th, 2010:

    I spent one whole day trying to fix this issue. I am so glad I found your posting as I was going to buy a new computer if I couldn’t solve it.

  73. 73rick said at 5:15 pm on December 11th, 2010:

    Hi I was wondering if you could help me with a constant beeping at start up I push shift and it stops and takes me into bios and asked me to select what to start with I’m running windows vista basic so I do and it starts right up no issues from there. I reset to origanal setting tried all the diagnostic programs and still it beeps at startup??????????? thanks for any help you can offer

  74. 74rick said at 5:21 pm on December 11th, 2010:

    sorry the computer is a dell inspiron 1501 thanks again.

  75. 75paul said at 5:37 pm on December 11th, 2010:

    do a diagnostic check: when starts, press F12 to show boot menu, select Diagnostics. run all.
    Or, download ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/diags/CW1320A0.exe (the link is at support.dell.com, inspiron 1501, diagnostics section).
    The application above will help producing a CD or a stick to boot from to do the diagnostics.

    HTH

  76. 76rick said at 8:47 pm on December 11th, 2010:

    Hi Paul

    I ran all the tests already as well as the ones on the dell website i think it maybe the key board causing it to beep continuesly, does that make sence or should i be looking some were else. Thanks Paul

  77. 77rick said at 8:54 pm on December 11th, 2010:

    Hi Paul

    Ok i just opened the file you sent and I’ve never done this test before how does it work and which option is the easy way out lol thanks again.

  78. 78paul said at 9:14 pm on December 11th, 2010:

    You have to create either an USB boot stick or a bootable CD. Both one of these and run all the tests. Read information below each of these.

    The easiest way is using an empty usb drive if no empty CD is available.

  79. 79rick said at 12:13 am on December 12th, 2010:

    Hi Paul

    Thanks I updated the file and ran a test when it got to the keyboard test checking for sticky key it seemed to freeze at 25% as I waited and waited finally i pressed a button and tried the test again and the same thing happend so I’m guessing its the keyboard?. thank you so much for your help.

  80. 80Orlando said at 9:34 pm on April 25th, 2011:

    Yooo thank you so much. I have dell inspiron 1501 and it used to lag so bad on youtube when i played HD videos. But thanks to your tip it doesnt anymore. i was getting sick of it.

  81. 81Orlando said at 10:01 pm on April 25th, 2011:

    I wanted to ask something since u have alot of experience with this. I keep getting a display error, something about atikmdag stopped responding and then the screen turns black and then back to normal. It happens all the time usually when i play games or watch videos. And its really annoying. If u know how to fix it let me know, if you dont let me know too. I dont wanna get my hopes up. sorry for bad inglish

  82. 82paul said at 6:07 am on April 26th, 2011:

    You did not specified your windows version. But, if it’s Windows 7, is a common problem.
    I hope this helps.

  83. 83Mikael said at 7:44 am on May 28th, 2011:

    Disabling the service Ati hotkey poller solved the keyboard problem. Thanks a lot for writing the tip here!! :) :) :)

  84. 84Grateful user said at 11:53 am on June 10th, 2011:

    Good work!
    Wish you success in new investigations :-)

Leave a Reply