Mechanical Keyboard switch broken?

TheMooman · November 9, 2015

So, I've bought a mechanical keyboard in August, and it has been great so far, but for some reason today it started acting a bit weird.

Whenever I push the "O" key, it seems to not activate about 1/15 times, at other times it activates twice in a row, and sometimes it seems to activate after a slightly larger delay, causing errors when typing (e.g, frmo instead of from).

I've used the drivers that I have to see if it was a problem with the letter O being registered by the computer, or whether it was just the switch itself that's the problem, and it seems that it's just this one switch that has this problem (I made it so that when I pushed another key, P, it would type an O instead, and when I pushed O it would type a P)

I've been thinking about it for a while, and have come to the idea that it might be dust inside of the switch, but am unsure whether that's true or not.

I tried shaking the keyboard gently whilst upside down and blowing on the switch (not really inside of it, seeing as I don't want to open up the keyboard in case I damage something, and not with compressed air either) in hopes that that would move any dust or whatever, but it didn't do anything.

It seems that after pushing the key loads seems to cause the problem to occur less frequently for a while, but that could just be a coincidence.

My keyboard is an A4Tech Bloody B540, with knock-off MX blacks made by GreeTech (I think that was the name)

After unplugging and plugging back in, the problem is still there, even after plugging into a different USB port.

Any ideas what the problem may be? Any fixes?

Update: The O key now seems to be a lot more persistent on not activating for some reason, even after several pushes.

TheMooman · November 9, 2015

Update: after reinstalling the drivers, the O key seems to still be unwilling to cooperate most of the time.

TheMooman · November 9, 2015

Update: My KB has a lighting mode where the keys light up as they are being pressed, and it seems that the key doesn't light up either when being pressed and not outputting an O.