As you may know from past columns, I’m undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. The most recent event was surgery to remove the tumor—along with 20% of my stomach, 35% of my pancreas, my gall bladder and a section of my small intestine (the duodenum)—in what is known as a Whipple procedure. I am now six weeks post-op, and still recovering. Since starting this column in January 2001, I’ve never missed turning in my column each month, and I don’t intend to start now.
As of April this year, roughly one billion PCs run Windows 10. One of them belongs to my wife, Michelle. I can remember the dangers of letting Windows Update automatically update a computer, but after Windows 7 came out, Microsoft seemed to have gotten its act together. So, the default setting of “automatically download and install updates” was in effect on Michelle’s computer.
Last week, the system automatically updated itself and, all of a sudden, it was impossible for her to type the same key twice in a row. I did the usual “turn it off and turn in on again” to verify the problem wasn’t transient. I did some searching around others experiencing (and reporting) the problem, but all I could find were keys which were repeating for no reason (which is typically a problem with accessibility settings). I spent time looking at all the possible settings I could think of, to no avail.
For someone who has been working with (IBM) PCs since they arrived in 1983, and written programs for MS-DOS and Windows, being unable to fix a problem like this is incredibly frustrating. Because the variety of PC hardware is so vast, it may not be immediately obvious that something is broken. My wife has a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 15IIL05 which we bought a few years ago at Costco. So, for the problem to become visible, enough people who are still using this model have to notice the problem (pretty easy—backspacing to correct more than one letter doesn’t work) and then contact either Microsoft (ha!) or Lenovo to report the issue. It takes time for that to happen (assuming it ever does).
By the way, an external keyboard works just fine, so that’s been the temporary workaround. The onscreen keyboard used for accessibility also works. We know that the backspace key works, since it will backspace over one character. The problem seems related to the software that controls the internal keyboard (the keyboard driver).
So, this morning, there was a new Windows Update, which I downloaded and installed. It changed the problem—some keys would repeat, but not backspace. Time to haul out the big guns.
Windows has a feature which allows you to undo updates. It doesn’t work for all updates, but in this case, it appeared that I could go back to a point before the problem occurred. So, I did that. That did not seem to remedy the problem either. Finally, I made the decision to reinstall Windows, while preserving my wife’s files. After a wait for that to happen, the problem still wasn’t corrected.
What to do now? At this point, everything gets very time consuming. I’m probably going to start by getting in touch with Lenovo support. Usually, I opt for chatting online with someone, rather than calling a support line. Using chat avoids any problems with hearing and understanding the other person, and provides a written record of the exchange. If anyone is likely to have a solution at this point, it’s probably Lenovo.
The other option is to back up my wife’s computer, and completely reinstall Windows. That’s really the nuclear option, and I remain somewhat hopeful it can be avoided. And, of course, it’s not guaranteed to fix the problem.
I hope this little story makes it clear that even though I’m pretty savvy when it comes to technology, it’s no guarantee that I can solve any problem that comes along. There are just too many ways that computers can break down. And when they do, it’s a painstaking process to fix them (at least if you try to do it yourself), without a guarantee of success. Frankly, I don’t know how non-technical people deal with computer issues.
Nominally, this column is about the intersection of technology and business. Right now, that intersection is dominated by the rise of “artificial intelligence,” which has become a pretty useless term. Large companies are certainly actively using AI to replace workers, although exact numbers are hard to come by. Websites are being impacted by search engines that provide AI summaries at the top of search results. There’s no need to visit a website when the AI summary contains the information you need. AI companies are releasing their own web browsers. Coding assistants like Claude Code seem capable of replacing programmers and even programming itself. And, of course, artificial general intelligence—and beyond that, superintelligence—call the entire makeup of the world into question.
A question for my readers: Is AI something you are worried about or interested in? I’m happy to write more about these topics, but I also want to provide information that is ultimately useful to you. Please let me know your thoughts at mike@mikeduffy.com.
