Help, please! xserver or evdev and laptop keyboard

I was away last week and updated my laptop around last Wednesday while on vacation (bad move). I noticed that xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99-905.2.20080702 and the corresponding xorg-x11-server-common were updated. I am not sure whether evdev was also updated then, or whether it had been updated a week or so earlier (if so, then it is not the problem, but most likely the xserver would be).

Since doing the update, I have full mouse functionality, but no keyboard. The keys just type nothing at all in gnome, kde4.1 (which I use), kdm and gdm. The keys work in grub and when I boot into run level 3 from grub (but limited, cannot type ' or ", for example, just letters).

As per recent instructions, I do not use an xorg.conf file, but thinking that that might be the problem, I tried to create a skeleton xorg.conf with just the keyboard section, thinking that my keyboard doesn't like evdev and wanting to make it use the old kbd driver instead (at least I presume that evdev is the present default), but, as I just said, I am unable to type a ", so I am unable to create an xorg.conf file.

Help!