FW 13 AI 300 – Keyboard squeak/sticking & Touchpad issue

Community Support
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Hello fellow Frameworkers!

I have two questions about my laptop (FW13 AI 300) that keep bothering me:

1} Sometimes some keys start making weird noises when pressing them. Not all of them, only some. For example the Meta (FW logo) key will do a weird and unusual clickty noise when I press it.

There’s also some keys (mainly the ‘D’ key, but others does too) that do a sort of squeak when applying a bit of pressure on it (not enough to fully press the key), but it doesn’t do that for all the keys.

What’s really weird is that it keeps coming and going. I don’t know what make it appear nor what make it go away.

I have also noticed what I believe is keys getting stuck in a pressed position (I’m not 100% sure tho). One example was that I was trying to paste a text in a Windows 11 QEMU Virtual Machine, but each time I was (physically) pressing CTRL+V, the Audio settings panel was opening in Windows, and I realized that it’s hotkey is CTRL+Meta (Windows logo)+V. I then pressed Meta key on my keyboard and tried again CTRL+V and it pasted without opening the audio panel. I can’t be 100% sure tho, as the keys don’t really look like they’re in a pressed position, and my system have virtual keyboards devices (running Arch Linux, where Plasma Keyboard keeps crashing recently), so it may just be a software lockout. It does get fixed by pressing the stuck key again tho.

For information I never eat/drink while using my computer so I couldn’t have spilled drinks on the keys.

2 } Since around when I got my laptop, the right side of the touchpad (so right-click mouse button) have always been doing a sort of ‘click’ before actually registering the click. Like if I click on the left side it clicks normally, but when clicking on the right side I first get that click and I get to the actual click registration, as if there was two levels, where the first one just click and do nothing and THEN register the click when going down further. It’s probably just that the mounting moved a tiny bit/got loose but I just wanted to confirm if it’s normal behaviour when this sort of things happens. It doesn’t actually affect me that much as I usually use the “tap to click” function, so I don’t physically click the right/left mouse buttons.

Are these normal? Is my keyboard just dirty underneath the keys? Or should I contact the support to replace the keyboard while I’m still under warranty?

Thanks!

2

Welcome to the community!

Those are not normally how the keyboard and trackpad works. Definitely contact support and start a ticket with them to get them resolved. The keyboard may just have been assembled ever so slightly off but there are a ton of screws to put it together, replacing it is the easiest solution.

The trackpad may just be slightly misaligned in the case too so taking it out and carefully reseating it may resolve this issue in this case.

Both of these things are not common but they do happen to a small number of units. Support is the best avenue to help get it resolved. Be a little patient though as they are going through a number of tickets right now with the launches of the their newest products right now. At least the Framework is still functional while support gets in touch. So that is a silver lining. Let us know how it turns out!

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Hi, thanks a lot for your answer! I’m going to contact the support as soon as possible, I’m reassured to hear that it’s probably the best option. I’m also going to see if there’s any other suggestions coming in this thread while waiting for their answer. I also think that the keys getting stuck problem is purely software, because last time it happened (Shift and Ctrl both being detected as pressed even tho they weren’t ), I pressed the right Ctrl and Shift button (which I both nearly never use) and it unstuck the keyboard.