After using my Dell lattitude laptop for some time, the Ctrl-Alt-Del key combination stops working. Other combinations like Ctrl-Shift-Esc for Task Manager also stop working. One opening Start-->Shutdown, I cannot even shutdown or put the computer on standby. If I reboot, then everything starts working, but after a couple of days, it stops. What could be the problem ? The only thing I have done recently on this box is to install a D-link 2.4 GHz Wireless Cardbus adapter. Before I did this, everything used to work perfectly. Please advise. Thanks.

Have you tried using your Ctrl and ALT key on the otherside of the keyboard? the other keys may have worn out intermittently

They don't work either. I have tried it. Any other ideas ?

I'm having the same problem, also on a Latitude using Win2K Pro and it's just cropped up in the past week or so. ctrl-alt-del and ctrl-shift-esc do nothing at all (though other sequences involving each of those keys such as ctrl-esc and alt-f4 do work). Selecting shutdown, suspend or logoff from the task bar brings up the shutdown prompt but clicking ok at the prompt doesn't lead to any of the above actions. I even tried using shutdown.exe from the NT resource kit and it did shutdown all my desktop apps, icons and taskbar but the shutdown never completed--I left it overnight and it still showed my background and mouse pointer but nothing else this morning. I finally did a hard reboot (holding the power button until the machine turned off), booted back up and logged on. Now ctrl-alt-del and ctrl-shift-esc are working again, but based on SilverBolt's comments, I'm just waiting for the problem to crop up again. The only change I can identify around the time this started happening was that I installed a new version of my Trillian instant messaging program and started running Yahoo messenger (since Trillian and Yahoo aren't getting along at the moment). SilverBolt--seems like a stretch, but are you by any chance also using Trillian or Yahoo Messenger?

TallTom, Sorry for the late response. Your problem is exactly the same as mine. I use Yahoo messenger sometimes, but it has always been there since long time, and I haven't upgraded it recently also. In fact, it is not even running in the system tray since boot up this time, and after 3 days, my ctrl-alt-del has stopped working. I don't have Trillian on this box. Let me know if you get some solution. Thanks ! SilverBolt

I have this too. Latitude C600 Win2k Pro, same problem for quite a long time now. Have to hold down the power button to get it to shut down. No yahoo. It did it yesterday and again today which is unusual. I have a D-Link DLW-650+ on this machine so I guess thats a common thing. Only other things I did today were: 1st power up - internal wired lan connection, then hiberbate. 2nd - internal wired lan, then hibernate. 3rd - wireless lan (at home). Now it won't shut down :-(