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Q: No keyboard, Startup Disk stuck on Windows 8 and Windows 8 won't start

I have a 15 inch Macbook Pro mid 2013 (i think, I can check if it helps). 2 days ago the space bar on my keyboard broke. By that I mean that as soon as I turn on my laptop it's always active as if I'm pressing it and as soon as I get the chance to type anything, by pressing any other button on the keyboard, the space bar get's unstuck and won't work at all. From what I could tell it's an electrical issue with the contacts on the keyboard and after going to an IT repair shop, they've told me that the only solution is to change the keyboard altogether. In the meantime I bought an USB keyboard.

I'm also running Windows 8 in Bootcamp and I usually let it log on to OS X automatically and I just use the Alt key at startup when I want to go In Windows. However I've noticed that since the spacebar is stuck and active at startup, I can no longer press Alt to change to Windows, so I decided to change the automatic startup disk from OS X to Windows and restart thinking that I could just repeat the process when I'm done in order to get back to OS X. But for some unknown reason, Windows 8 won't boot, it just takes me to the windows icon and freezes. Sometimes a message saying 'Preparing Automatic Repair' will show up underneath the windows icon, but it's still frozen. Now I'm stuck in this boot sequence and I can't switch back to OS X since the Alt key won't work.

Now my questions are: is there a way to switch partitions at startup without a keyboard? Or is there a way to switch off the Mac's keyboard completely and use the USB one instead? Or even a way to break the spacebar contact completely so it will turn off since I'm gonna change the keyboard completely anyway and it would just be a temporary solution? Thank you for any info !

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Mar 9, 2016 1:32 PM

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Q: No keyboard, Startup Disk stuck on Windows 8 and Windows 8 won't start

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