Netbook Trouble

AnteCantelope

I've got an Asus eeePC that's around two years old, and I haven't used it for nearly a year. I got it out today and it's got a weird problem: the keyboard and touchpad usually don't work. It works fine for about a minute, and then they just stop working completely. The computer itself is still running fine though. If I put the computer to sleep it will start working again for another couple of minutes. I thought that if I let everything update it would work itself out, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Right now the touchpad is working but the keyboard isn't, and putting it to sleep and waking it up has stopped working. Also, it's started to make a high-pitched whiney noise. Faint, but enough that I can hear it.
I thought it could be a problem with the keyboard connection to the motherboard, but I don't know why putting it to sleep and waking it up would fix that. It makes me think that there's a software issue, something to do with the keyboard drivers, but a) it happened as soon as I turned it on, before I connected it to the internet, and b) I've connected it to the internet now, why hasn't it downloaded the new drivers?

Any advice or troubleshooting would be appreciated, but at the moment the keyboard isn't working so I can't log in, which reduces my options.

harvest

I don't know anything about laptop-style stuff but you should be able to plug in a normal USB keyboard and use that while you troubleshoot it. I dont know how many USB ports you have to work with though.

AnteCantelope

Huh, didn't even think of that, thanks. I suppose that will also be a useful way of seeing what the problem is, if an external keyboard doesn't work either.