There may be something simple going on, so
start with that angle first to see if another USB
port will allow the keyboard action to complete;
knowing it is intermittent. The keyboard itself
may have a few sticky or failing key switches.
Perhaps one of them does not always work...
If the USB port itself in the computer is failing
or intermittent content, it may be repaired in
some cases, or it may be rather involved. A
cable to the keyboard may be also suspect.
There are two Apple command keys, does the
second one on the Apple keyboard work OK?
They do the same thing, of course, but if the
keyboard has a simple defect, the other one
should work. I seldom use the right-side one,
but the left one on my keyboard would fail first.
There is a thing called Keyboard Viewer and
though the keyboard issue (or other issue in
the computer which affects copy/paste) lets
you see what keys are pressed. If the key
you know you pressed does not appear to do
anything in this Viewer, the key switch inside
the keyboard not registering is suspect.
If you have a second, known-good keyboard
then go that route if you have not done so;
and further test the rest of the computer...
The normally included Apple Hardware Test
on a disc in the original boot install/restore
software packet would be able to check it.
There may be a software glitch in the OS
which causes a failure of this aspect of
the process (to copy/paste) and that may
be a harder situation to troubleshoot even if
it does not involve difficult hardware issues.
If you can find out how the processor temps
are (if this issue happens when they are hot)
and what else is running in the system, at
the time the copy/paste fails, that may narrow
down some other items and they can be used
as leads to see if they may be causing this;
or if they are related at all to the symptom.
The process of elimination may take time.
And if the computer does not have much
personal stuff in there, one of the things to
do would be to consider (after other things)
to test the hard disk drive; repair disk from
the booted Disk Utility on the installer disc.
You could try starting in SafeBoot, shift key
held down until the login window appears
and then after you login, the desktop Finder
screen stablizes. You could then find and
launch Disk Utility (see GO in Finder menu)
from the Utilities Folder; and select the item
in Disk Utility's left-side menu relating to
Macintosh HD (or user-given HDD name)
and then click on the button below that
says 'repair disk permissions' and let it run.
After it is complete, quit Disk Utility & restart
the computer normally. This is harmless.
Other things to try out of desperation include
throwing darts at a dartboard across the room
or considering things such as reset PRAM and
NVRAM. Instructions are found in Support site.
An authorized product specialist may be able
to use more advanced hardware tests to check
the computer; but they won't spend alot of time
so if the actual defect escapes their effort, it will
only have cost you money to still know it is there.
If hardware in the computer itself may be suspect
and nothing else appears to work, you could try
a power management reset. That may be called
a system management controller... (PMU or SMC?)
And one of the other troubleshooting processes
of elimination include running the computer from
an all new installation on a zeroed over-written HDD
and the following reformat and Installer process...
But if you manually key in everything you otherwise
would attempt to do the fast and lazy way, on the
keyboard by fully typing in all the words, you will not
need to do anything just yet. At least not if patient!
Hopefully before whits end, you can discover nirvana.
Good luck & happy computing! 🙂
{PS: just working on a word totem here. Not a wood one!}
