Keyboard randomly stops working after Leopard Install

Erase & install here.

The keyboard problem took a couple days to show up. 😟

I recently upgraded my MBP 17" (latest generation) to Leopard, funny thing I bought a the new aluminum keyboard too the same day, and did not notice anything. Today, a friend at work told me that after he upgraded to Leopard that his keyboard didn't respond. He has a first generation MBP. So, out of curiosity I took tried the built in keyboard, and sure enough it did NOT work. Surely people at apple are experiencing this too. Were is our fix apple?

Wireless keyboard works flawless, Built in keyboard flaky at best...

I am having the problem after a clean install. Erase & install...

Erase & Install. Like Amberdine, the problem only started happening after a few days, not immediately. MBP was new in June this year & ran Tiger without ever losing its keyboard.

Brand new MBP, upgrade installed leopard. No virtual PC or anything else driver related that's custom.

Occurs randomly after sleep sometimes. Logout will allow me to type, but on loggin back in, I get the issue again. This implies to me that it's definitely a software issue.

I've now done a power unit reset shut down, battery out, power out, 5 seconds press on power button, battery in, power in and startup.

I haven't had it again yet, but it's early days.

One thing of note though is that on shutdown I used to have a slightly odd issue. After the screen went black if I shut the lid too quickly, the front power light went on. Opening the lid and waiting a few secs resolved this.

After the power unit reset, shutdown now seems instant and I don't have the light-on-front issue any more.

Apple geniuses suggested I did a erase-install. I doubt very much if that'll fix it. I'm also a little doubtful about the advice because they told me restoring from time machine would potentially bring back corrupted files (ok, so what's the point of time machine for backing up then?). I guess they have a point, but given the random nature of it, I very much doubt it's a corrupt file.

More likely to be a badly coded driver - especially given they just updated the aluminium kbd driver (which is effectively a laptop keyboard).

Fingers crossed on the power unit reset. I'll post back but I'd really like some feedback from apple on this.

I have exactly the same problem. Brand new MBP running Leopard. I have been using Excel (office 2004) and the keyboard kept freezing intermittently for no reason - this caused me great problems as I was on a conference call and the one taking the minutes with a laptop that kept stopping to function - not good.

My kids each have a black MacBook. Core Duo. 2ghz. 2gb RAM, 160GB HD's. Same configuration of applications. The only extra apps installed are Photoshop CS3 and Office 2004.

Both computers HD erased and disk checked with a fresh install of Leopard when it was released. The a reinstall of all apps.

No issues when computers were using Tiger.

So far only one MacBook does this freeze. So I wiped and reinstalled Leopard and ran the stand alone 10.5.1 update. Computer still has the freeze.

This morning I read of this problem on the Ars Technica website. So here I am posting.

I have a MacBook Pro 2.16gz Core Duo 2 with 4gb RAM and a 250gb HD.

Same installation of Leopard. Full erase and fresh install. Like the MacBook's, no strange applications of enhancers at all. Yesterday was MY first experience of this freeze. I had to do a hard restart.

My son's MacBook usually comes around again after about 1-2 minutes. But not my MacBook Pro.

All computers bought directly from Apple online. Never had any issues with the computers before Leopard.

So even fresh installs of Leopard and one reinstall hasn't changed this issue.

The MacBook does this freeze consistently all day. My MBP only twice so far.

What's up Apple?

same problem 1 year old black macbook intel osx 10.5.1 just installed KEYBOARD DIES.

Same problem with new MBP 10 days ago. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse go offline and I need to reboot.

Similar problem here. Bought my MacBook Pro around 4 months ago.

Mine's more of a momentary thing - and it gets really REALLY annoying after a while. For example, When I start typing passwords on text fields, it sometimes gets like 1-2 second delay - and first few characters are NOT being registered into the system - meaning I either get a login-failure or have to enter the password again.

Apple Geniuses (so they're called) are not even attempting to blame this on the Software (namely Leopard), but we know they're not geniuses.

Please address this issue with a software or firmware update as we all know its a software issue. Why? This NEVER happened in Tiger. And no hardware has been changed. Only a software change - which is Tiger -> Leopard.

Gnarlodious wrote:
Same problem with new MBP 10 days ago. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse go offline and I need to reboot.

You do NOT have the same problem. All these people here are talking about the internal keyboard, not an external bluetooth keyboard. Your problems are probably completely unrelated.

S.

Same here internal keyboard goes dead, on my MacPro 15" 2.4 ghz with Leopard, every once in a while. Seems to be happening more often now. The Laptop is one month old. Come on Apple work on your OS and not your flashy hardware at this point. Your market cap is going to come crashing down if you don't fix these basic problems.

In addition,
- My wonderful airport extreme doesn't work with a USB printer, like several other posts,
- My imac 24" is extremely slow after loading Leopard, prior to Leopard it started to crash, like several other users.
- Time machine can't backup to a network hard drive
- etc...

You do NOT have the same problem

Oops, my mistake. It is happening without the bluetooth keyboard also. Computer freezes and I am forced to hold the button down.

If it freezes completely, this is also a different issue.

Our issue is that the internal keyboard stops working, however the trackpad may continue to work, and the computer itself functions normally.

Happened to me for the first time today. Laptop is two weeks old (or so). Got it right after Leopard starting shipping.

Yesterday was the first day that I let my computer run all the way down to the point of it going to sleep. 10 minutes ago, I open the computer, and have to press the power button to wake it up (doesn't do a fresh boot, just resuming from whatever apple calls "hibernation"). It wakes up, shows password screen, and the keyboard doesn't work. Same as the OP suggested. Light sensors work, mouse works, but built in keyboard doesn't. I press the cancel button, then wake it up 30 seconds later, same problem. Close the computer, open it, and keyboard is working.

Then, after about 3 minutes of use, the keyboard cuts out again, and has done it two more time already.


Please apple, do not let this continue.

Edit: Happened again. Sleep + resume fixed it (at least temporarily).

Second edit: And AGAIN! And a note, I do NOT have vmWare installed. The latest thing I installed was Adobe CS3 Suite, and before I had installed that, I did not notice the keyboard ever stop working. Apple, PLEASE, get this fixed!! If it continues to be persistent, I may just switch back to my PBG4 for a few more months.

Message was edited by: Johan Henkens

Message was edited by: Johan Henkens