Aluminum Keyboard gradually stopped working

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Aluminum Keyboard gradually stopped working

Okay, this is weird. I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Leopard on Friday (now Sunday night) and had no problems all weekend while I was out of town. I arrived home this evening and hooked back up to my home setup, which is a 24" display and an external aluminum keyboard and operate in lid closed mode.

I was watching a movie as I cleaned my room and went to hit Ctrl + Right Arrow to check my email and such in another space, but it wouldn't move. I found quickly that my right arrow key wasn't working at all. Not for spaces, not for DVD Player, not while entering text, nothing. So I unplugged it and plugged it back in and holy crap! It suddenly started registering all these right arrow keystrokes, causing my movie to fly through to the end as it sped through the chapters, and it just caused a big mess.

Once I hit another key it stopped freaking out, but now the right arrow key wouldn't work again. I unplugged it again and the same thing happened. It starts thinking I'm more or less holding down the right arrow key until I hit something else. Upon heading here to do some searching, I found that multitude of keys were no longer working. I quickly typed the alphabet and all the numbers on the keyboard to see a whole bunch of random keys were no longer working:

abcdefghiknpqrstvwxyz
12345680

Now the entire keyboard is dead. Not a single key will work, caps lock won't turn on, absolutely nothing. The messed up part? My mouse, which is plugged into the keyboard, works fine. What the ****? What gets me is this wasn't just something that happened the second I got into Leopard. I was playing with it for a good 6 hours Friday night before leaving town the next day, and probably a good 2 hours tonight before this happened.

Why would my keyboard just slowly degrade into nothingness like that? It started (I think) with just one key, then several others until every key died. Right now I'm typing with the MBP's keyboard, which is just fine. I do have the old Apple keyboard that I left down at the studio I work at that I could bring back home for the time being, but I love the aluminum keyboard because I love the keyboard on the little MacBooks; I payed $60 for this thing and I'm not going to just shove it aside while I await Apple's no-comment quite update.

15.4" 2.33 GHz MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Nov 11, 2007 8:43 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 13, 2007 1:30 PM in response to ncaauwe

I have the same issue here, but on a new 24" iMac that came with the wireless keyboard and mouse. First I noticed connection lost notices popping up and waking my computer all night long every few minutes. So today I tried to zap the PRAM thinking that may fix the problem but I discover now that all the alphabet keys and # keys are dead.

Alt, option, control, shift and tab work fine, but tilde, caps lock and enter don't work. I can't type Command Option+PR to reset my PRAM, also my USB keyboard can't seem to enter single user mode, zap PRAM nor enter the Open Firmware interface (If intel Macs even have that). Yet in the OS it uses all keys normally. You can turn on keyboard viewer in your International system prefs tab and notice which keys aren't sending anything. I'm going to try unplugging the computer for a while, but I think the internal battery will prevent that from making any difference. 😟

Maybe I can find a bluetooth signal sniffer and find out if the keyboard isn't sending those keys or if the OS is ignoring them.

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Answer 2

Nov 13, 2007 1:45 PM in response to ncaauwe

Resetting the SMC didn't help. Looks like the Intel Macs don't have PMUs anymore... resetting that would automatically reset the PRAM. Seems SMC reset doesn't do that so I don't know how I'll be able to zap the PRAM. Maybe a Tech Tool demo disc will work.

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Answer 3

Nov 13, 2007 8:31 PM in response to ncaauwe

Why not take or send it back where you got it for a good one?
My last Apple board was defective so they just gave me a new one.
 DALE

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Answer 4

ncaauwe Author

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Nov 21, 2007 12:06 PM in response to Dale Weisshaar

Sorry for the late response. I feel really angry now, probably more-so than if the keyboard was defective. Turns out my little brother may have in fact spilled pop on my keyboard while I was out of town. I didn't notice this until a day or two after it died, when my friend pointed out that the enter key on the numeric pad was sticking. I got it unstuck, and upon closer examination found that it looked like something had been spilled all over the numeric keypad. All of those keys were being stubborn and sticking when I tried to press them.

He won't admit to actually spilling anything on the keyboard, but I've become accustomed to his style of lying, and it's pretty obvious something was spilled on it while I was out of town. This really ****** me off because that definitely isn't covered under warranty.

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Answer 5

Nov 21, 2007 1:21 PM in response to ncaauwe

because that definitely isn't covered under warranty.

You can be sure of that.
This is what I did (but when the liquid was still liquid);

I spilled a huge cup of coffee with cream and sugar all over my Apple Pro keyboard. I immediately disconnected it and got two gallon bottles of distilled water (please use distilled water; chlorine and other contaminates in tap water will mess it up).
I thoroughly rinsed it out using both gallons. Then turned over the keyboard and shook all the excess water out. Then I placed it on end so the remaining water could slowly drain onto a towel.
I let it dry for two weeks. That's how long it took to totally dry; I checked by looking thru the clear bottom of the keyboard. When I plugged it in it worked perfectly.
During those two weeks I purchased one of those $29.00 white Apple boards and liked it so much that my original is a spare now!
But, in your case, if have read of members here putting the keyboard in a dishwasher with no soap and running it. Take it out before the dry cycle. If you were going to dump it anyway, try this before throwing it out. That dried on pop is going to be hard to get out without some hot water.
Dry procedure would be the same--a long time. Don't try to use it before it is dry. You can fry the board!
Luck!
DALE

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