So I have a relatively old laptop, it's an HP Pavilion DV4-1540US. We got in in early 2010. It's been totally sufficient up until a couple of issues recently in the last year. I think they are unrelated, but I will mention them both just in case they are.
About a year ago, the little pin the in charging cord got stuck inside the laptop. I ended up successfully replacing the charging port with the help of a youtube video, and 6 y/o DD as an assistant. Everything went well and the fix seemed to work. I had one extra screw left at the end, but I like to think it doesn't matter.
A few months after that, we started having issues with the spacebar not working. Then the backspace button, too. I tried to google this and I resolved it a several times with repeating a keyboard combo involving the non-working keys. Random, right? Well, that fix stopped working, and now the arrow keys and the enter key have joined the the strike. I snagged a usb keyboard that nobody was using from a relative, and we still use it, but it's a bit of a hassle.
Since the keyboard combo worked to fix it for a while, I feel like this is a software issue and not a hardware issue. I am thinking of backing up everything and somehow wiping it clean (uninstall/reinstall windows?) and starting again. Before I get into how this is done, can anyone comment on whether or not this makes any sense as a potential fix?