"r" key on keyboard stops working - creates system beep

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Level 1

8 points

"r" key on keyboard stops working - creates system beep

My ten year old was messing around with Universal Access and VoiceOver the other day and a few hours later it seems that the "r" key on my keyboard has stopped working. I can type all the letters of the alphabet but when I get to "r" I get a system beep and the character doesn't appear on the screen.

I've reinstalled Snow Leopard from scratch (i know, last resort) and checked every other setting in System Preferences to no avail. At this point I think the Universal Access issue is not actually the cause of the problem but I don't know what is or where else to look. Any thoughts?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 22, 2009 1:10 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 22, 2009 1:21 PM in response to doughacker

Create another user account - does it affect that account?

Open references, keyboards and open keyboard and click 'show keyboard and character viewer in menu'. From there open the viewer. Click 'R' - does it work as expected or not?

It might just be a prefs file in users/library/preferences. Trash files relating to universal access and keyboard.

Otherwise techs would usually say reset the SMC and the PRAM (even though not a power issue, maybe some settings have been trashed?)

Does the Mac chime? It passes it's power on test?

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Answer 2

doughacker Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 22, 2009 1:27 PM in response to Peter Knapp

Haven't tried the other user account thing but I will.

I have done the Keyboard/Character in Viewer thing and "r" doesn't work from there either.

I can certainly do the resets and prefs trashing . . .

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