Keyboard a1243 suddenly not working with macbook pro running catalina. The USB ports are working and the keyboard still works great w my older macbook.

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Keyboard a1243 suddenly not working with macbook pro running catalina. The USB ports are working and the keyboard still works great w my older macbook.

USB Apple keyboard a1243 suddenly not working with Macbook Pro Retina (early 2015, 13") running latest update of Catalina. When I plug the keyboard and mouse into any USB, the light in the mouse doesn't come on anymore. However, after running some tests I see the USB ports both work fine with every other device and the keyboard and mouse still works great with my older Macbook (running Snow Leopard). What's the deal? Do I need some sort of driver update? Is there a way to see what the USB ports are doing on my machine? Thanks!

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Oct 2, 2020 9:54 AM

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Answer 1

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Oct 7, 2020 6:30 PM in response to vtre6ufyt

Hello vtre6ufyt,

Thanks for asking the Apple Support Communities for help with your keyboard not working with your Mac. Thanks for also isolating the issue like you did.

Please start with the troubleshooting here: If your Mac doesn’t respond to key presses - Apple Support

If you are also using any Bluetooth devices that are also not working, check this article, otherwise you can skip this: If your Apple wireless mouse, keyboard, or trackpad isn't working with your Mac as Expected - Apple Support

Since you know the ports on the computer work, and these devices work with your other computer, restart your computer and check if there are any updates: Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

If you still have issues, check if the issue is also occurring in safe mode. Please check this article: How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

If the issue does not occur in Safe Mode, check the section in that article titled: If an issue doesn't happen in safe mode for troubleshooting.

It may also be beneficial to know if this is isolated to your current Mac account. Please test if the issue is also occurring in a newly created unmodified test user. Just add a test administrator user and log out of your current account, and log in to the Test account. Try Text Expander or Safari and see if the keyboard and mouse work here. Once you log out of the test user and back in to your main administrator account, you can delete the test user if you desire.

If you still require assistance, let us know if the issue works correctly in safe mode or the test user. Thanks and have a wonderful day.

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Answer 2

vtre6ufyt Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 7, 2020 7:43 PM in response to Eric--F

My MacBook pro is up to date - no updates needed. I had tried restarting many times before posting here and before finding the answer to this question. I also tried resetting SMC and PRAM, checking the disk for errors using Disk Utility, logging in as a different user, and starting in Safe Boot to see if there was any change. None of those experiments worked.

Here is what caused the issue with the keyboard: Dropbox (the cloud storage service) has some issues where, using their default configuration settings, the documents you have stored in the cloud will show up in the Storage section of About This Mac as if they are stored locally on your Macintosh HD. In my case, even though I have over 100GB available, the way Dropbox was configured made the drive behave as if it was full - stating that I had 3.2TB of data stored on my 256GB SSD (which is obviously not possible).

Moments after resolving the Dropbox issue my A1243 Keyboard and Pro Mouse both worked perfectly again. Per Dropbox customer support (and confirmed by my experience), the fix is as follows:

"You may see some online-only files that appear to be taking up physical

space on your local disk, as macOS calculates the size of a file based

on logical size rather than physical size. You can however adjust your

Dropbox settings so that online-only files have both logical and

physical size set to zero. To do so:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com

2. Click your profile picture (or grey circle) in the upper right corner.

3. Click Settings.

4. Set the “Smart Sync update for Mac” setting to "On".

The

setting takes a little time to update in the backend so please wait

about 5 minutes, then restart your Dropbox app as follows:

1. Click the Dropbox menu in the system tray or menu bar of your computer.

2. Click your profile picture or initials.

3. Click Quit Dropbox.

4. Start Dropbox app from the Applications folder.

The Desktop app will then resync your files with the logical size set to

zero bytes. This may take some time to complete depending on how many

files you have in your Dropbox."

I hope this can help others experiencing this issue with Dropbox Smart Sync on their MacBook Pro disabling their USB keyboard and mouse. It's an incredibly annoying issue!

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Keyboard a1243 suddenly not working with macbook pro running catalina. The USB ports are working and the keyboard still works great w my older macbook.

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