Hardware keyboard broken

[thehatergator]

my n and B key doesnt work do you guys know a fix for this? i had to copy and paste the letters just to type this

 

[raystriker]

my n and B key doesnt work do you guys know a fix for this? i had to copy and paste the letters just to type this

buy a new one?

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Laptop or desktop keyboard? Mechanical or membrane? Did you spill anything on it? Have you tried cleaning under the keys?

If it's a laptop and you've already tried cleaning the keys, then it's likely the keyboard is just borked and you have to replace it. Depending on the laptop this can either be extremely easy or extremely hard, based on how new it is. Older keyboards it's usually just a matter of removing some screws from the bottom of the laptop and pulling it off, but newer ones you'll normally have to pull the thing apart to get to assembly. Google "Laptop MODELNUMBER Keyboard replacement", chances are you'll find an iFixit article for doing it.

If it's a desktop and you already tried cleaning the keys, then it's still probably dead and you just replace the whole thing.

 

[thehatergator]

its a laptop sorry for not clariyfing

 

[FAST6191]

Being right next to each other in most major keyboard styles I would first wonder if someone spilled something on it. It is by far and away the biggest cause of such things.
My fix rate with such things if it is a spill is... technically I made something better once (though not fully fixed) at the cost of many hours and some reasonably expensive chemicals.

A rock or something getting in there is another reason but in those cases it is usually more that it will not press/feel odd when pressing. Get the obstruction out of there and hope it did no damage along the way.

General death is a thing that has happened. Often before it does then you will see things like one press of the key sees several happen at once, or the inverse and you get to press several times before it registers.

The only other thing is if it was disassembled at some point it might not have had the ribbon/connector put back in properly. That will often appear as groups of keys not working.
I guess it could happen from general use (bottom of the keyboard is often where the ribbon is so eh.

To that end yeah it is probably replacement time, or external keyboard time.
Replacements as mentioned above vary between models. Most older ones and business grade ones are turn it off, remove battery, undo a few screws/clips, remove, replace, screw/clip back together (though I will usually turn it on and confirm working before doing lots of screws up).
Newer ones... often a pain, especially in cheaper consumer devices. Might also depend what you buy -- some replacements will see you have to remove a heat welded plastic frame from the keyboard and insert the replacement in that, if you buy a dead model online (rare to find these days, and probably quite expensive if you do get a viable one*) then you might be able to cannibalise a whole top cover or something.
In one dark and stormy night I did once see a laptop motherboard that was a whole array of microswitches to form a keyboard -- I thought having a mouse be that was a bad step but this was something else. Fortunately that was one of the cheapest and nastiest from an unknown make laptops that I had ever seen so was not too concerned there.

*most people kill a laptop by spilling things on it so the keyboard tends to be gone. The days of people sticking broken screen laptops on ebay with the hard drive, dvd drive and battery removed for £50 are seemingly long gone.