Apple Aluminum Wired Keyboard Not Working

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Level 1

4 points

Apple Aluminum Wired Keyboard Not Working

Please help.

My apple aluminum wired keyboard that I bought in March 2010, and a second one that I just got, periodically stops working - none of the keys work. I've been running snow leopard since it came out. The keyboard issues just started a week ago. If I unplug the USB and plug it back in, or if I reboot, it usually solves the issue.

I can't figure out what's causing it. It seems to happen when I'm using different programs. Is it at all possible that Firefox is causing this?

Has anyone heard of this issue before? Do I have to do a reinstall of snow leopard?

BTW - this is the 2nd wired aluminum keyboard with this issue so it's not the keyboard itself that's the problem.

thanks

iMac late 2006, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 25, 2010 11:17 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 25, 2010 11:38 AM in response to Lance000

Try another USB port.

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Answer 2

Lance000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2010 11:49 AM in response to baltwo

Of course I have tried that before and it did not work - tried a hub and tried different ports on my computer directly.

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Answer 3

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 25, 2010 12:09 PM in response to Lance000

Ah! The proverbial missing information. Since that didn't solve the issue, I suspect an call to AppleCare or a visit to an Apple repair center is in order.

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Answer 4

Lance000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2010 12:41 PM in response to baltwo

Sorry about that - wasn't sure how much info to include.

I have already spoken with apple care and they said it would be a hardware issue - my apple care has expired so I can't call them again for help.

The genius at the apple store said it is likely a software issue and that I should probably either do an erase and reinstall or create a new account and move my user info over to the new account. I would prefer to not do this since it is a pain.

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Answer 5

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 25, 2010 1:05 PM in response to Lance000

The genius is all wet. Create a new admin user account, log into it, and see if the issue persists. If so, reinstall the OS, it only replaces all OS and Apple app stuff, run Software Update, repair permissions, and try again. If not, report back.

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Answer 6

Lance000 Author

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4 points

Oct 25, 2010 1:15 PM in response to baltwo

Thanks for your help but I'm really trying to find a solution without reinstalling the OS.

problem is that it is very intermittent so it may be difficult to reproduce in a test account and I can't afford to spend hours in a test account.

Any other ideas?

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Answer 7

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 25, 2010 1:34 PM in response to Lance000

Takes 10-15 minutes, but your choice.

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Answer 8

Lance000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 26, 2010 5:43 AM in response to baltwo

So much for the 10 to 15 minutes. I did a reinstall of the OS - initiated while logged in. That took a couple hours. (also updated software and ran the repair permissions as suggested)

But then I decided to also create a new account and home folder and move all my files over (I first deleted the old user and created a disk image). Big mistake. Coping 70GB of documents takes a very long time. The big problem is that my computer froze when trying to copy over the documents folder (the contents) - it's 25GB. The wheel started spinning and it was stuck the whole night. So now I'm trying to copy it over again.

I'm just trying to start as fresh as possible without losing my stuff. I thought a new user would take me one step further.

I scoured the internet for an easier way to do this. It seems like there are only articles from apple on how to transfer info from one computer to another (or device) but nothing on tranfering all you info from one user to another. I also searched google and did not find a clear step-by-step article.

So here's the questions:
1. What is the best way to transfer the info from the old user to the new without copying over the system problems (i.e. my keyboard not working properly)?
I do have time machine backup but I was worried that it would simply copy over the problem to my new user.

2. What do I do about the old user library - do I copy anything over from here?

3. How do I get back all my system and application preferences? or will copying this over just restore the problem I had with the keyboard?

thanks

Message was edited by: Lance000

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Answer 9

Lance000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 26, 2010 6:10 AM in response to baltwo

One more addition question to my post just above that I forgot to add:

- how do I get all my mail accounts and mail back into my new account?
- same question for my Address Book contacts?

Thanks

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Answer 10

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 26, 2010 9:15 AM in response to Lance000

I have no idea why it took a couple of hours to reinstall SL. Not my experience here. You never said if creating a new user account fixed the problem. If so, doing the transfer (70 GB?) isn't the way to solve the issue. This is how I suggest solving issues unique to only one account:

Log into your new account, make a list of the preference files (plists) located in /new account's username/Library/Preferences/, including any in the ByHost subfolder, log back into the original account, move everything on that other account's list from the original account's Preferences folder into a newly created folder on the Desktop, log out and back in, and see if the problem goes away. If so, you can copy the ones in the Desktop folder (one at time) back into /Preferences/, restart, and see if the problem returns. If so, you've identified the corrupt/conflicting one. Continue with all of them until isolating the bad ones. That'll save you the trouble of resetting preferences.

The second way is much more detailed and I'll not burden you with the steps unless the above doesn't fix the issue.

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Answer 11

Lance000 Author

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4 points

Oct 26, 2010 11:30 AM in response to baltwo

it's tough to say whether it corrected the problem because I could go on typing for hours before it stopped before the fix. So I'm not sure yet - so far so good.

Your suggested way of importing preferences would take me about 48 hours to go through each preference. It's easier to just manually redo the preferences.

You never said how to import my mail accounts and mail and settings into my new account - is there an article on this that you know of?

thanks

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Answer 12

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 26, 2010 2:32 PM in response to Lance000

There's no importing of preference files from one account to another. If you assume the new account's correct, then you only remove those from the old account that were present in the new account and see if regenerating them fixes the issue. If not, remove half the remaining ones, and repeat. As noted, manually resolving the problem is what Conflict Catcher in OS 9's days. If I knew how to do the import, I'd had posted something. I don't use Mail, only Eudora and it's set up so all bootable volumes use the same baseline on a standalone data volume.

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Answer 13

Lance000 Author

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4 points

Oct 29, 2010 8:52 AM in response to baltwo

I've been working on fixing my computer for the past 4 days. I tried everything - reinstalling os, erasing and importing from time machine etc...

The only thing that seems to have worked is doing a complete security wipe of my HD and reinstalling everything manually app by app, and resetting all my preferences.

So far so good. I just have a few third-party apps to install and some plugins for my browsers.

Apple was not one bit of help. And whomever wrote their knowledge Base articles on how to recover your system is an idiot. They skip steps and give wrong information. It is so **** frustrating. Really unbelievable.

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Answer 14

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 29, 2010 10:34 AM in response to Lance000

Apple was not one bit of help. And whomever wrote their knowledge Base articles on how to recover your system is an idiot. They skip steps and give wrong information. It is so ** frustrating. Really unbelievable.

Without details, such as links to the articles, and which steps might be missing, this rant provides no useful information. If you want to comment on specific KB articles, there should be a link to Apple at the bottom of each one for you to use.

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Answer 15

Lance000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 1, 2010 7:22 AM in response to baltwo

baltwo - I did not realize you work for Apple.
The only kB article I could find is HT3910. I found another article somewhere on apple help called " Recovering Your Entire System" with "keywords": "khelp kmosx6".
I couldn't find any article on creating another account and transferring all your information to that account in order to delete the old one that was corrupted (as I mentioned a genius told me to do this initially).

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