what just happened

cns00 · 19 Sep 2019

i was playing a nintendo ds game on my laptop using desmume which is a nintendo ds emulator. i had configured the l key to load state and the s key to save state. i loaded the game into the emulator and i pressed alt enter to do full screen and then i pressed l to do load state. that means the l key and alt key worked

after that i pressed s a few minutes later to do save state state but it didnt do save state and it opened cheat search. after that i pressed alt enter again to exit from full screen mode. it didnt work. also pressing alt f4 to exit the emulator didnt work. pressing alt tab worked but it showed the tabs instead of switching tabs (pressing ctrl alt tab shows all the open tabs and i was able to do that by pressing alt tab). i closed the emulator by right clicking on it in the taskbar and clicking close

after that i saw that my open programs didnt recognize the alt key. like for example i had paint open and pressing alt in paint did nothing and it didnt open the main menu in paint. the same thing happened in an open document and pressing alt in the document did nothing

also pressing the windows key didnt open the start menu. i had to open the start menu by left clicking on the windows icon in the lower left. i shutdown the computer and i turned it on and then things went back to normal and the windows and alt key worked again

also a couple of months ago when i was playing a windows game using my bluetooth keyboard i was pressing the arrow keys and then the game suddenly switched to windowed mode and pressing enter switched between full screen and windowed mode and the keypress wasnt recognized in the game. i closed the game and i also saw weird things like i saw now and pressing the windows key didnt open the start menu and things went back to normal after i did shutdown and turned on my laptop and the windows key worked again

what happened? did the game mess up windows or windows messed up the game? a game should not be able to stop the windows key and the alt key from working in windows so that means that windows glitched when i was playing the game. what do you think?

Pejole2165 · 19 Sep 2019

There are a lot of keys and key combinations setup in Windows, atl-tab, alt-right arrow for example, when you run a game and that games window has focus certain keys will only work in that game, for example Eve online, alt-f4 activates your fourth module, but in Windows the same key combination can close an applications window.
It is possible that your game/ emulator "locked" certain keys instead of returning control to Windows, but I would probably be looking at the keyboard Bluetooth drivers. You can do some testing by using the same games/ emulator with a wired keyboard.

cns00 · 19 Sep 2019

thank you for your reply. my laptop is an alienware 17 r5 laptop and my bluetooth keyboard is https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Uni.../dp/B00GWGLUZ0. i just pair and unpair and i dont think i can update drivers

btw i was playing the game using my xbox one controller and i was using the bluetoooth keyboard to press l and s. so you are saying the fault is on the bluetooth keyboard and i should use the actual laptop keyboard to press l and s?

Pejole2165 · 20 Sep 2019

I'm not saying any such thing, I'm suggesting you do some testing, in truth it could be any number of things, badly written games, badly written emulator, Bluetooth drivers, something you have loading in the background, the list goes on.
I just gave a few things you could check based on how I would check.
In your OP you didn't say you were using a controller as well, so only you really know all the variables, I would eliminate one at a time to see what causes the issue.
It could even be a conflict between controller and keyboard driver.