one row of letters on keyboard not responding

I was typing away at an email this morning when the row of letters starting with "a" just stopped working. So the keys a,s,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,; along with all their shift counterparts and anyother combination I can think of don't work. Funny thing is the ' key works just fine.

I didn't spill anything on it, drop it or do anything else I can think of to cause this. I have tried repairing permissions, restarting all to know avail. I connected USB keyboard works fine and ALL the other keys work just fine as well. I also check the num locks and caps lock keys - still no working.

I have a tech repair guy who said it doesn't sound like the keyboard is bad but he hasn't actually looked at it, only gone on what I said. Is there anything else I can do?