W, A, S, D, keys and shift aren't working together [duplicate]

W, A, S, D, left Shift, left Ctrl keys work individually, but when pressed together, it does not work. This prevents me from sprinting. Right shift and ctrl works fine with other keys. I have a Coolermaster keyboard, not even a year old. Should I take it to the service centre? Anyone have any solutions to offer?


This is a lmitation related to the construction method of the keyboard.
Most consumer keyboards will not allow you to press more than 3 closeby buttons because it uses a grid system to understand which button you are pressing.
So for example if you are pressing QDB and 9 would work as they do not share any "coorinates" immagine every row and every column of Keys being connected and your keyboard knows which key you are pressing only based on these coordinates trough electric signals.
If you press for example WS and D most keyboard will not be able to notice all of these Keys since there are overlapping connections (namely W, and S share vertical and S and D share horizontal).
You can easily see this on a text editor: press and keep down the W and S Keys and then start hittind the D key.
Chances are you will not see any "D" characters being written.
the exact combination of characters may vary depending on the way your particular keyboard has been built, CTRL ALT and some other buttons have their own dedicated "lines" so they will generally not have issues of this kind.

What you need to look for in your keyboard when buying one is:

  • The key rollover as this is the name of this issue, 3KRO is most likely what you have, NKRO is a keyboard that would allow you to press multiple Keys at once.

An anti-ghosting function, on the other side, prevents your keyboard from registering Keystrokes you are not in fact pressing. This could happen because both the coordinates corresponding to the character are shown as "connections".
Almost every keyboard has this feature nowadays since it is considered a critical failure when ghosting happens.

In definitive this is a physical problem and you need an N-KRO (no key rollover)keyboard to press all the Keys and not have this issue or at the very least a higher number of Keys before rollover. Taking your keyboard to the service center will solve nothing and depending on the shop and how long you've had your peripheral you might not be able to get a refund either

You can find more informations here, particularly on why this is not a problem you can solve trough software: How do I remove the limit on PC keyboard button presses?