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The following discussion may help other users.
Customer: I have tested your keyboard test program under WinPE v2.0 now (as shipped with Vista) and it seems to work fine.
However, on notebooks, there are special buttons (not part of the keyboard, but above the keyboard) which usually handle special functions like launch Outlook Express (email) or Internet Explorer, etc. However these scan codes are not picked up by your Windows keyboard program.
Passmark: I just did some testing on a Microsoft extended keyboard in Windows XP. It has a "Calculator" key, and a bunch of extra keys for quick browsing, "search", "mail", "forward", "back", etc... All these keys were picked up by KeyboardTest (i.e. a Windows key code was displayed by KeybaordTest, even though there was no key mapped to that code in the bitmap image).
It is hard to comment with any authority about your particular portable as we don't have the PC to play with and don't know what device drivers might be loaded up for the keyboard.
Customer: The laptop manufacturers have confirmed that the particular notebook I tried used I/O controller ports for the hot buttons so they are not ‘key presses’!
All other notebooks I have tried worked.
Background info:
The use of I/O ports means that the additional keys are not really part of the keyboard. They are more like having an external device (like a serial or parallel port) connected to the computer. So it is normal that special keys connected in this fashion do not appear as normal key presses.
Customer: I have tested your keyboard test program under WinPE v2.0 now (as shipped with Vista) and it seems to work fine.
However, on notebooks, there are special buttons (not part of the keyboard, but above the keyboard) which usually handle special functions like launch Outlook Express (email) or Internet Explorer, etc. However these scan codes are not picked up by your Windows keyboard program.
Passmark: I just did some testing on a Microsoft extended keyboard in Windows XP. It has a "Calculator" key, and a bunch of extra keys for quick browsing, "search", "mail", "forward", "back", etc... All these keys were picked up by KeyboardTest (i.e. a Windows key code was displayed by KeybaordTest, even though there was no key mapped to that code in the bitmap image).
It is hard to comment with any authority about your particular portable as we don't have the PC to play with and don't know what device drivers might be loaded up for the keyboard.
Customer: The laptop manufacturers have confirmed that the particular notebook I tried used I/O controller ports for the hot buttons so they are not ‘key presses’!
All other notebooks I have tried worked.
Background info:
The use of I/O ports means that the additional keys are not really part of the keyboard. They are more like having an external device (like a serial or parallel port) connected to the computer. So it is normal that special keys connected in this fashion do not appear as normal key presses.