Touchpad & occasionally keyboard freeze since Snow Leopard upgrade

I'm starting to have a similar issue on my Mac Pro with the Apple aluminum wired keyboard. I notice it primarily when switching between Spaces.

I use Control+Arrow keys to move between spaces, and after a few hours of uptime, I switch spaces and the Spaces interface stays locked on the screen for several minutes. During that time my keyboard is completely inoperable EXCEPT that I can continue switching between spaces the entire time. I just can't do anything else. The mouse still works perfectly as well.

Just reset my PRAM, so we'll see if that helps, but I'm not optimistic at this point.

I have the exact same keyboard problem since upgrading to snow leopard. I use 'alt'-number to switch spaces. It gets stuck with the icon on the screen and can only switch spaces but cannot type anything else. I have to reboot it. I am downloading the latest update and hope it helps.

Well the latest SL updates didn't help. It just locked up again switching spaces. Someone help please.

Status Update:

After resetting my PRAM, as mentioned above, the occurrence of this problem on my Mac Pro seems to be much less frequent, but still occurs occasionally...and it is SUPREMELY annoying to be forced to reboot because of this! And now I have been regularly having the exact same issue on my brand new 15" MacBook Pro.

About to reset the PRAM now, as it seems Apple has yet to offer any explanation or fix. C'mon guys! I seriously don't understand how Apple ranks so highly in those customer support surveys...they're always completely silent on issues like this until they suddenly get fixed with zero communication. Drives me nuts!

I have also been experiencing this problem. I use Ctrl+1/2/3/4 to switch between Spaces. It's VERY annoying. It often requires a reboot (sometimes a forced reboot by taking out the battery). I am considering going back down to Leopard because of this.

I feel like i'm missing an arm when I don't have proper use of my Spaces

I've had a similar problem and have found a workaround, though not a fix. Go into System Preference and click on Expose and Spaces. In one of the active screen corners choose "Sleep Display". When the spaces icon gets stuck at the bottom, move your mouse to this corner and put your display to sleep. When you move your mouse it will wake up your screen and everything should be cool. I hope this works.

I've exactly the same issue: while trying to switch to Space 1 by hitting Ctrl+1 my keyboard freezes, I can use mouse though and I can see the small spaces switcher window.
Getting the monitor to sleep is a workaround, but I'm expecting a fix as this makes my work less productive.

It is very hard to see the connection between the "follow up"posts in this thread and the problem of the original poster. He / she was talking about a general keyboard/ trackpad issue, quite possibly of a hardware nature

Everyone else seems to be just talking about issues specific to "Spaces"! Some posters aren't using an MBP (the focus of this particular forum) and some, again, are unfortunately talking about suffering the "exact same problem" as the original poster, when it is patently clear that they don't!

There are, of course, many reasons why people may experience a slowdown of one kind or another in any given situation, but I very much doubt that there is any connection at all between the OPs MBP related trackpad issue and any of the other matters raised in this thread wrt Spaces!

I realise that most of the posters here are very new arrivals (with a couple of others with a handful of posts), but "Spaces" issues are really far better dealt with in the Snow leopard forums than here., and if people believe there is some special MBP question involved they would be far better advised to start a new thread detailing their issues in much more detail, rather than "me tooing" on top of a thread that at face value seems to involve a different issue (and often hardware, as well) altogether!

Cheeers

Rod

I have a software product named Cinch by Irradiated Software. I've been receiving reports of this issue in when my app is running. Can anyone here confirm that they are running Cinch, or any other application the works with the mouse/trackpad (MagicPrefs, Zooom/2, etc)?

Regards,
Steve

Steve,
I'm using Cinch and having this problem. It does seem to be more frequent since I've been trying Cinch out, though I did have this problem on occasion prior to trying Cinch. (Great app by the way!)

I have the same problem. I am usually in Safari 4.0.5 and the touchpad will just stop working. If I wait about 5 seconds it will start working again. The only software I am running is Safari and Mail most of the time. This is not happening to me after waking from Sleep. My keyboard and power button seem to work fine when the touchpad is locked up.

I'm also having problems where the keyboard sometimes thinks that a key is being held down so I figure the USB controller is having problems or something. I have already tried reseating the ribbon to the motherboard with no luck.

I have exact same issue with my mbp... Was working absolutely fine before the upgrade.

One more workaround for this kind of problem is to force quit Dock.
I have some freezes too but my touchpad/mouse works fine. So i can launch Activity Monitor and Force Quit Dock. After killing Dock - everything becomes OK.

On this other thread: http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2383403 user cater alerted to this patch which apparently solves the problem - 10.6.3 (v 1.1) combo updater.

You can find it here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1017

Still downloading so not sure if it works or not, but it seems like a good thing to do.

Cheers!

I'm not the original poster but I thought I'd share that ever since I installed 10.6.4 I have not had a single incident of the keyboard/touchpad locking up. It looks like their fix worked!