Keyboard stops working in Snow Leopard when using Spaces

...yeah it's still borked. Sheesh.

Back to CTRL-SHIFT-EJECT.

Just adding my voice to the choir.

Running the 10.6.4 on my iMac, and continue to intermittently run into the spaces issue (whether I am running Things or not - though I generally do run Things because it is awesome).

Would love to see Apple address this - it's been going on for quite some time.

Well, it appears that at least a few of you don't have to imagine the disappointment I experienced when I saw the 10.6.4 release notes make mention of the keyboard lock-up problem. How quickly my hopes were dashed after I installed 10.6.4 and attempted to use use keyboard commands to shift between Spaces.

Meet the new problem, same as the old problem.

It's hard to believe that the Apple programmers could let this issue remain unresolved through FOUR different updates to the Snow Leopard.

Perhaps all of Apple's attention is on the Ipad and the new Ipod these days.

I just upgraded from Leopard to 10.6.4. Keyboard crashes regularly, approx every twenty minutes, whenever more than one application is open. So far I am only using Apple applications - itunes, ical, safari - oh, firefox also did it. Here is what I have already tried:

* Turned off spaces and restarted
* Turned off all applications launching at startup and restarted
* Tried using the screen sleep workaround; no dice

For me, the trackpad still works fine, but the keyboard does not; AND, whichever application freezes the keyboard, its menubar gets stuck at the top (so even if I use the mouse to launch a new application, it stays in the background even if its image is in the foreground). I believe the crashes happen at the moment I switch applications by clicking on one, but not sure.

Only fix I have at the moment is hard restarts. I guess I could try only using one application. Genius bar tomorrow as my Snow Leopard is under warranty.

Just echoing what everyone else is saying. Except to say that the problem is WORSE now that I upgraded to 10.6.4. Are we going to have to march on Cupertino to get this problem fixed? Is anyone at Apple listening? Is there some way we can get together and figure out what we all have in common such that we have the problem and no one else does? I looked at the Console log. I don't see anything unusual through my novice eyes before I rebooted. I'm using Flock as my browser. Is anyone using a different browser?

When I experience this issue (10.6.4/mid 2009 MBP) I find that the Spaces desktop overlay stays on the screen. It only seems to happen to me when I am returning to Space 1. I use CMD-Number for my spaces.

I've also found that using my mouse to change spaces from the menubar 4 or 5 times makes it go away.

I have a case where I can reliably cause the condition and cure it. (I use cmd-1 thru cmd-4 for my spaces desktop keys and I have vmware installed but not running.)

To cause it:

I Cmd-2 to desktop 2. Once there I launch iMovie. While iMovie is starting I Cmd-1. Nothing happens until iMovie finishes starting. Then I am switched back to space 1, but the spaces icon stays up and my keyboard is disabled (within apps).

To cure it:

I then Cmd-2 back to desktop 2 and wait for the spaces icon to disappear. Then I switch to desktop 1 using the mouse and wait for the spaces icon to disappear. Now my keyboard works.

Just wanted to add my voice to the choir. 17" MBPro 2.33Ghz, 10.6.4. This is a very annoying problem.

I too am having this problem.

I'm wondering if it's some sort of Apple Script problem because I can reproduce it every time with the Things Quick Entry(Ctrl +option + space) then escaping out of that screen an switching spaces with Ctrl + arrow keys.

Also, as mentioned earlier in this thread: putting the screen to sleep with Ctrl + Shift + Eject fixes each time for me.

I'm also a victim. MBPro 2.66GHz i7. I found that using the mouse to select a Space with the little menu icon makes the large center screen icon finally fade away, but doesn't re-enable the keyboard. I've been recovering by closing my cover, waiting for sleep, then waking it. I'm chiming in here so I will get notified if it's ever solved.

I noticed several people saying they had this happen every time they used keystrokes to shift Spaces. I have the two thumb buttons on my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 2.0A set to command-option-leftarrow and command-option-rightarrow, the Spaces next and previous commands. They work with no problem almost all of the time, so that doesn't seem to be what is triggering it on my machine. The corresponding keyboard keys work equally well.

What triggers this most often on my machine is launching Parallels, which I have set to use a fixed Space. Because Parallels takes a long time to boot up, I often switch out of this Space to do something else while I'm waiting. Some combination of the above behavior triggers this bug with great frequency. But it occasionally occurs when I haven't gone anywhere near Parallels, either.

Also (and I find this really bizarre) when the keyboard is "dead" it will still process control-1 to control-6 keystrokes (Spaces go-to-Space-N commands) — but not any other keystroke.

I'm in the same boat. I just upgraded from 10.5.8 to 10.6.4 and with a few days I started experiencing the keyboard problem. In my case it's as if the command key is stuck - once that happens I can't do much. I thought at first this might have been a hardware problem until I came across this thread - it's just too much of a coincidence for this to have happened so soon after my upgrade. I was only able to break out of the problem by restarting several times. Like others have said this is beyond annoying...

I'm starting to suspect it's related to Growl. It started a couple of days after I installed Growl. After some days of frustration I uninstalled Growl and restarted, the problem went away and stayed away for months. Another app just installed Growl for me two days ago and ta-da, the problem's back. I've switched off Growl and restarted and hopefully I won't see it again. Anyone else want to try switching off or uninstalling Growl?

Don't use Growl and never have, so it isn't the cause. Could be exacerbating the underlying problem, of course.

When this problem cropped up for me, I wasn't using GROWL. It's been reported that "virgin systems" have this problem too. It's appears to be a bug.

For those who don't know... A work around is using the keyboard shortcuts in a utility called Hyperspace to switch between spaces. It works great for me.

I've given up that Apple is ever going to fix this.