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unresponsive keyboard and mouse on restart

I have a late 2014 27" 5k iMac running Catalina 10.15.7. A week ago when restarting, both the keyboard and mouse were completely unresponsive so I could not enter my password. The only solution that worked was unplugging the iMac; the keyboard then worked on restart. I reset the NVRAM and SMC after unplugging each time, so the keyboard was hopefully active. However, both a Safe Boot and a normal restart still resulted in unresponsive keyboard and mouse. I then updated to 10.15.7, but no improvement.

I restarted from an external SSD which was a recent CCC backup with Catalina 10.15.6. This works perfectly with the keyboard and mouse! I used Disc Utility to do first aid on the iMac internal SSD with no faults found.

Is it possible that the NVRAM battery is failing after 6 years, even though volume/time zone etc setting still are OK? Is there any way to check this?

Posted on Jan 10, 2021 11:03 PM

Top-ranking reply

rkaufmann87

Level 10

144,606 points

Posted on Jan 10, 2021 11:07 PM

Darrall,

The following will require any USB keyboard and mouse. If you don’t have them, borrow or buy them, they are inexpensive!

1. Connect the USB keyboard and mouse to the computer.

2. Open System Preferences – Bluetooth

3. Un-pair the wireless keyboard and mouse.

4. Turn off Bluetooth

5. Restart the computer in Safe Mode per the directions in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

6. Restart the computer normally.

7. Open System Preferences – Bluetooth

8. Turn on Bluetooth

9. Re-Pair the wireless keyboard and mouse.

10. Unplug the USB keyboard and mouse and begin testing the wireless devices again.

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unresponsive keyboard and mouse on restart

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