Patient: Sony Vaio laptop, VGN-FW550F (about yrs old) running Win7 64-bit

Symptoms:
The (laptop's) keyboard is malfunctioning on the primary, administrator account. Pressing one key on the keyboard produces a different character on the screen. This happens across applications (MS Office, FF, etc.) Examples of the changes:
u-4
i=5
o=6
p=*
[=linespace
j=1
k=2
l=3
;=-

Diagnostics:

1) Another (non-admin) account has no problems (suggesting to me that this isn't a hardware problem)

2) I went to Device Manager, deleted the keyboard, and reloaded the driver (through the boot sequence). The problem remains and is still on only the admin account.

Research:
The instances I've been able to find like this suggest creating another account. This seems like a really big pill to swallow. Sure data will be easy to move but all the other things...

I'd really like to solve the problem in place so to speak without going through all that. Ideas on how to proceed would be very much appreciated!

BG