Enter / Return key stops working

I have a Dell Latitude E5400 laptop running Windows 7.

Everything runs fine on it for days then I suddenly notice the enter/return key is no longer working e.g. I could be writing an email, press enter for a new line but it doesn’t ‘register’ – so no new line. I thought it might be some dirt under the key perhaps so I tried running the Windows onscreen keyboard but the Enter key on that doesn’t work either.

A reboot always fixes the problem but it’s a pain. Any ideas a) how to fix it and b) out of interest, is there some other key combination that I can use as an alternative to using the Enter key when I need to?

UPDATE: Thanks to CarlF's suggestion, I tried exiting running programmes and found it seems to be a problem with PhraseExpress.

Solution 1:

This happens after days, right? Try killing the running programs one by one. It's possible that one piece of software has a memory leak and gets increasingly bloated over days until it starts doing weird stuff. Use the Task Manager to be sure their are no applications running, then check whether Enter is still locked out.

The other thing that occurs to me is a keyboard shortcut being assigned to Enter. I don't know that this could happen spontaneously, though.

Finally, in most programs Ctrl+M substituted for Enter, but many Windows programs now don't allow this.

Solution 2:

This is a known problem with Phrase Express. Had to hard kill it too since quit wasn't shutting it down.

Apparently you can stop it from registering enter in expert options as described in this Stack Overflow answer

In PhraseExpress, please disable the expert option "Route TAB and ENTER through PhraseExpress" if you experience problems those keys.

Screenshot:

Please also note that using multipe Text Expander simultaneously may introduce interferences as you experienced. Unfortunately, there is no way to get around this limitation for us vendors.

Michael Schmidt PhraseExpress Team