Boot-up keyboard commands not working

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8 points

Boot-up keyboard commands not working

Hello.

For some reason, when my iMac is booting up, the keyboard commands to affect boot-up (for example, holding Option to pick which drive to boot into) do not work. It wasn't too much of an issue before, since I could access my Boot Camp partition through the Startup Disk preferences pane. But that partition suddenly stopped showing up there, and with holding Option not working, my Boot Camp drive is essentially inaccessible to me. Does anyone know why these keyboard boot-up commands are not working, or any way to fix this? I'd greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance.

17" Core Duo iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on May 21, 2009 12:37 PM

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Answer 1

May 21, 2009 12:52 PM in response to DrSciencePhD

Did you enable firmware password protection?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352

That basically disables startup keyboard commands.

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Answer 2

DrSciencePhD Author

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May 21, 2009 12:59 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Not that I can remember. Thanks for the link, I'll use that information to see if that is what's causing in, and hopefully that'll fix it. 🙂

EDIT: That page says, about Intel Macs: "Requires the password to use the Startup Manager, accessed by pressing the Option key during startup (see below)." Holding the Option key when starting up does nothing. If this were causing the problem it should at least give me a password prompt when I try it. 😟

Message was edited by: DrSciencePhD

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Answer 3

May 21, 2009 1:07 PM in response to DrSciencePhD

Since some startup settings are stored in PRAM, so I would try resetting PRAM (assuming that keyboard command does work).

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Not sure if it affects startup keyboard commands, but if you have not done the above yet, you should do it before trying other measures.

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Answer 4

DrSciencePhD Author

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8 points

May 21, 2009 1:57 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

I checked the Firmware Password protection. It was disabled and I left it disabled. Then I tried to clear the PRAM, as per the link you gave me, and the key combination on booting did not work. It seems that absolutely no keyboard commands will work on booting, period.

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Answer 5

DrSciencePhD Author

Level 1

8 points

May 21, 2009 2:26 PM in response to DrSciencePhD

I feel stupid now.

I unplugged everything except the keyboard from the computer, switched it to a different USB slot, and it worked. I plugged everything back in.. and it didn't.

Apparently the problem was that I had my printer plugged into the keyboard's USB slot. D'oh. I plugged that into the computer, and plugged something else into the keyboard's USB slot, and now the key commands work (I'm in my Boot Camp Windows as I type this).

Sorry for wasting your time, Kenichi, and thank you so much for your replies!

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Answer 6

May 21, 2009 3:11 PM in response to DrSciencePhD

Not a waste of time. Someone else will probably have the same issue and read your post. USB interference and interactions can be mysterious.

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Answer 7

tonz123

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Jun 24, 2009 9:50 PM in response to DrSciencePhD

Hi, I have that problem, the only thing is that the iMac intel will not boot up and the keyboard is not responding at all, tried on all the three USB ports on the back of it and still will not work, i cannot boot it up to change anything and have all other ports free, what can I do?

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Answer 8

~JS~

Level 1

0 points

Jun 25, 2009 1:48 AM in response to DrSciencePhD

Hi,

Please help! 🙂

I picked up a Mac Pro Dual Intel Quad-Core from a partners office. The system has four 750gb drives. It had Tiger on it.

Here are the steps I tried:
1. I got leopard and installed it. I installed on drive 1.

2. Software updates. Installed Flash runtime and Silverlight runtime.

3. Opened boot camp and split the boot drive equally for windows and mac os.

4. I then tried installing Vista Business and my monitor freaked out. I started having weird colors displaying after the boot up to the Windows Vista Disk. The Disk is from my MSDN subscription and I've installed with it before. The install failed after Windows install restarted the machine.

5. Reformatted all the drives and reinstalled Leopard with the OSX boot DVD. I skipped installing updates and just went straight to boot camp after a fresh Leopard install. Same problem on windows install.

6. I thought the drive might be messed up, so I wiped all the drives again and tried installing OSX on drive 4. BIG MISTAKE :-/
OSX worked but once I started installing windows Vista it crapped out again.

Now I can't boot to anything.

I tried manually putting each drive into bay 1 to boot. No dice.

None of the boot shortcut commands seem to work: Holding option does nothing at start up. Can't boot into single user mode. Holding c does nothing at start up. It's possible my keyboard is not working correctly because I have had problems with my USB keyboard in the past.

Any suggestions?? I'm going nuts here and I need this machine set up ASAP for a huge project.

Thanks in advance.

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