Well I was going to post this in the laptop forum, but I guess its kinda more relevant to hardware. I've got a laptop running kubuntu 7.10, and it was all running fine until one day when I realised I could no longer log in, I eventually found out that it one of the shift keys seemed to be pressed.

I thought it was properly some crap holding the key down or something so I took off both shift keys, but still they seem held down. I even hit my laptop a few times, but that didn't help either. Every now and then when running the laptop the shift key will return to normal, but it always comes back.

As my password has a number in it, the only way I can log in is to use a usb keyboard (as I can use caps lock to cancel the shift for the letters but it wont allow the numbers to be pressed). This would be a solution, however the mouse is still affected by the shift key from the laptop keyboard (it tries to shift-click instead of clicking)

Is there a way I can delete the shift key from having any effect on the laptop?

to do lower case .....when not stuck....type as normal.

WHEN SHIFT IS DOWN TRY turning on the cap lock>>>>>it reverses the shift

caps lock + shift key, wont let me type any numbers or special chars

(try pressing shift with caps lock to press 7, then try without caps lock... you get & both times.)

Do you know which shift key is causing the problem? You can disable shift keys in X using xmodmap. For example, to clear all shift modifiers:
To add back the left shift key to see if it’s the problem:
To add back the right shift key to see if it’s the problem:
You will obviously need to use Capslock to capitalize the appropriate letters (e.g., in “Shift_L”).

If both keys are bad, you might turn your Caps Lock into a Shift (instead of a Lock).

Note that the above might not carry over into libraries which make use of low-level keyboard events (e.g., SDL). In order to eradicate the troublesome key completely, you will need to make the change at the kernel level.

ah thats very helpful, thanks I'll try that tomorrow and let you know how it turns out.

Thanks