iMac wakes from sleep with a key stuck
I routinely wake up my computers from sleep by pressing a modifier key like shift, command, etc; these keys don't generally cause actions in whatever software is running so they make good "wakeup" buttons.
I recently got a new 20" aluminum iMac, which I love, but it seems that once in a while a key gets stuck. The shortcut menu appears when I try to click on something, or text will get selected, or everything acts like I'm right-clicking. If I do a quick run through all the modifier keys, the problem goes away until the next time I wake the machine. So since getting the new iMac, my routine was changed to pressing a modifier key, waiting till the machine wakes up, then pressing all of the modifier keys.
I discovered today that what's happening is, when I do my regular wake-up thing, whatever key I pressed while the machine was sleeping gets stuck until the next time it's pressed. It's like the key press message is getting to the machine, but the release is ignored while the computer is in the process of waking up. It thinks I'm still holding that particular key down. So now what I do is press one key, then press it again when the computer's awake.
The problem only occurs when the machine goes to sleep due to inactivity. I can't reproduce it by invoking sleep from the Apple menu or the keyboard shortcut.
This never happens on my Core Duo iMac or on my MacBook Pro. It does, however, happen every time on this machine whether I use the included aluminum keyboard or the old white keyboard.
I just got the idea of holding down the the shift, control, or whatever key, until the machine has fully recovered from sleep. I will post further if anything interesting happens when I try it.
I'd like to get things back to the way they were before though (except I want the new iMac to stay of course!). Any ideas?
I recently got a new 20" aluminum iMac, which I love, but it seems that once in a while a key gets stuck. The shortcut menu appears when I try to click on something, or text will get selected, or everything acts like I'm right-clicking. If I do a quick run through all the modifier keys, the problem goes away until the next time I wake the machine. So since getting the new iMac, my routine was changed to pressing a modifier key, waiting till the machine wakes up, then pressing all of the modifier keys.
I discovered today that what's happening is, when I do my regular wake-up thing, whatever key I pressed while the machine was sleeping gets stuck until the next time it's pressed. It's like the key press message is getting to the machine, but the release is ignored while the computer is in the process of waking up. It thinks I'm still holding that particular key down. So now what I do is press one key, then press it again when the computer's awake.
The problem only occurs when the machine goes to sleep due to inactivity. I can't reproduce it by invoking sleep from the Apple menu or the keyboard shortcut.
This never happens on my Core Duo iMac or on my MacBook Pro. It does, however, happen every time on this machine whether I use the included aluminum keyboard or the old white keyboard.
I just got the idea of holding down the the shift, control, or whatever key, until the machine has fully recovered from sleep. I will post further if anything interesting happens when I try it.
I'd like to get things back to the way they were before though (except I want the new iMac to stay of course!). Any ideas?
intel iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.2)
