Can't type your password in Log-in screen? Mouse and keyboard don't respond?
Can't type your password in Log-in screen? Mouse and keyboard don't respond?
Read below for a solution.
Apparently on some Macbook/Mac models after you turn to Filevault encryption, you may not be able to use keyboard after a restart. If you wait a while the message will appear offering to reset password via restart into Filevault recovery (it's not regular recovery mode).
When you restart into Filevault recovery mode, the keyboard and trackpad will working. However when you try to unlock your system hard drive/SSD with the user password you perfectly know, it will not be accepted.
Then, if you click restart, the mac will just hang. If you restart manually using the power button to shut it down and start, the mac will go right back to the Filevault recovery.
The only way to go back to the regular login screen is to perform PRAM reset (OPTION+COMMAND+P+R after the first start up sound).
However you will find that the keyboard and trackpad do not respond again.
The solution to the loss of response of keyboard and trackpad I found involves a complete reinstallation of the OSX and is the following.
- Prepare and connect to the mac a non-encrypted external OSX boot drive that also has an OSX installation app (download your OSX from Apple store - it will show up in Applications - in case of Catalina as Install macOS Catalina.app .
- Go to the Filevault recovery mode by waiting for the forgotten password message on the login screen.
- Click on the "secret" file menu, choose Startup Disk, select your external drive.
- Hit restart, confirm.
- If it simply restarts and reboots from the external drive, great. Skip to step 7.
- You might see the rainbow wheel. Keep waiting until the screen dims and fans slow down. After that you can shut down and restart - most likely it will now boot from your external drive.
- Copy/backup your User folders/files from the internal SSD - if you can. You will be deleting all your data in the next step.
- Open Disk Utility and completely erase the root system drive, deleting all system volumes.
- Format it into encrypted APPS volume.
- Install OSX by using the Install app from step 1.
- Restore files from your backup.