Space Bar not working...

Question

Level 4

1,325 points

Space Bar not working...

I am trying to help my grandmother. I have tried using known good keyboard, checked SysPref>Keyboard>reset to default and all to no avail.
Does anyone know why the space bar would not work on this computer?

Thanks for any and all help.

Adam

MacBook 2.0 CD, G4 Cube 1.2Ghz, G3 500 iBook, Mac OS X (10.5.5), Max RAM in All Models

Posted on Nov 29, 2008 11:06 AM

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Answer 1

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,690 points

Nov 30, 2008 7:53 PM in response to Adam White

More info on the eMac would help, like the processor speed and the Mac OS version installed. The amount of RAM installed might be useful, too.

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Answer 2

Adam White Author

Level 4

1,325 points

Nov 30, 2008 9:58 PM in response to Allan Jones

700mhz, I believe it has 512 or 640 RAM, Tiger OS. Has all updates available. Wish I could give you more information, but unfortunately, grandma lives 2 hours away and I won't see her again till Xmas week. It just seems odd that all other keys work fine but the SpaceBar. Very vexing!!!

Adam

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Answer 3

JMVP

Level 6

16,845 points

Dec 3, 2008 8:51 AM in response to Adam White

When you checked System preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse, did you also check Dashboard & Exposé on the chance that the space key was inadvertently assigned in there?

If you're certain that the known-good keyboard really is good, check if there's some oddball third-party software conflict by Starting Up in Safe Mode. Also use System Preferences -> Accounts to create a new administrative user account, log into that freshly-created troubleshooting account, and see if the spacebar works correctly. If it does, check the user preferences back in the normal account: open Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal, then copy and paste the following and press return:
find ~/Library -name '*.plist' -exec /usr/bin/plutil -lint {} \;

You can also download Preferential Treatment (which provides a GUI front end to the plutil command).

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Answer 4

Adam White Author

Level 4

1,325 points

Dec 26, 2008 11:31 PM in response to JMVP

Thanks JMVP,
Your suggestions got me on the right path.
I tried the new account approach and spacebar started working.
Went back to old account and went into Library/preferences/... took all of the plist's and stored them in a new folder on the desktop.
Restarted and spacebar is working now. I gradually went through different plist's and put them back in one by one.
Everything is working fine now.

Thanks for your suggestions. Keep up the good work.

Adam

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