cannot type capital letter r with shift r

If you turn on the keyboard viewer, (System prefs > Language & Text > Input Sources, make sure Keyboard viewer is checked), and press Shift + r. You should see the Shift key (on both sides), turn gray, along with the letter "r".

If not, then, there's an issue with the keyboard.

Try reseting the SMC, per this document: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

If the problem persists, try another keyboard, or take this one, assuming it's an Apple keyboard to a local Apple retail store, have a Genius check it out.

zyvox wrote:

i checked shift + r is not bound to any short cut

Check again. Go to system prefs/speech and make really sure that R is not set as the trigger for either Text to Speech or Speech Recognition. That is by far the most common cause of your problem.

I also have just developed the Shift r problem along with random keystrokes that open LaunchPad. The latter seems to not be as bad as it was last night but the Shift r still does not work. I tested the Keyboard Viewer and the Shift keys go gray but the r does not with the Shift pressed.😟

IowaMacUser wrote:

I also have just developed the Shift r problem

Have you double checked that R has not somehow gotten assigned as the trigger for anything in system preferences/speech or some other place?

Yes I have looked over many threads here and have tried all of the key assigment prefs. That makes the most sense but haven't found anything that would link it.

Also remember the r works fine. It's the Shift r that doesn't work.

I've had the same issue with a early-2008 MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (Model A1260 w/ Penryn CPU) from the day I purchased it from Apple. I took it to the Apple Store the week after I purchased it and they were able to use an external bootable drive and the problem didn't occur there, so they prescribed a 'clean install' of OS X. Long story short, I've tried a number of options, including clean installs and revisits to the the Genius Bar to confirm the problem persists and is not a figment of my imagination. Again, the most recent recommendation was to perform another clean install. Not only did I clean install OS X, I zeroed-out the drive before partitioning and reinstalling OS X (10.6.3 aka Snow Leopard). It ran fine... until I tried to bring my legacy user profiles and documents over from SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner (tried both approaches) via Migration Assistant and discovered that the Shift-R problem is somehow tied to my legacy user account profile. I created a secondary user account and no Shift-R problem appears whatsoever. I also tried manually copying files from my back-up hard drive to all the correct sub-directories, but I always seem to get tripped-up with sub-directories 5 to 6 folders deep. So, I need to figure out either how to repair the problem in my primary legacy user account, or determine how to move all my legacy documents, applications and file libraries from the the corrupted legacy user account to a new user account. I'm dying to finally resolve this issue, especially since I have a brand-new Crucial/Micron M500 480GB SSD just waiting to be installed. I'm willing to take the time to zero-out the internal drive AGAIN and start over if I can get the proper guidance on how to navigate getting this bug removed! Thanks.

Duane V wrote:

I created a secondary user account and no Shift-R problem appears whatsoever.

Normally that indicates a bad .plist in Home/Library/Preferences. Finding which one may be tedious. You can move half at a time to the desktop and restart to narrow it down, etc.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the insight! I intuitively agree with you, but I don't know if I have the patience to try that approach given how many hours I've already dedicated to identifying the offending problem.

I think I'm going to take a more global approach by exporting and backing-up all my app-specific data, then start with a freshly reformatted and OS-installed drive, reinstall all the apps, then manually import data app by app. Same approach with the Documents folder.

Hopefully that approach will do the trick!

Thanks,

Duane

Duane V wrote:

I think I'm going to take a more global approach by exporting and backing-up all my app-specific data, then start with a freshly reformatted and OS-installed drive, reinstall all the apps, then manually import data app by app. Same approach with the Documents folder.

Before doing all that, which could result in your backing up and reimporting the bad .plist, I would try moving the entire Home/Library/Prefrences folder to the desktop and restarting. New good ones should be regenerated, and if the problem is solved but you are missing some needed data, you can put the old .plist for it back.

Tom wrote:

Before doing all that, which could result in your backing up and reimporting the bad .plist, I would try moving the entire Home/Library/Prefrences folder to the desktop and restarting. New good ones should be regenerated, and if the problem is solved but you are missing some needed data, you can put the old .plist for it back.

Unfortunately, that approach didn't work either. I initially dragging the files out the Home/Library/Preferences directory, but the files were only copying to the Desktop.

I thought maybe I needed to log-out of the user account and restart from an external boot drive, so I tried that next. I didn't log-in to the user account (didn't need to), but the same thing happened: the "Preferences" folder from the Home/Library/Preferences directory again copied to the desktop.

I figured I'd try one more variation. I selected the Preferences folder, then went to the Move to Trash command. That finally moved the Preferences folder. I then used Secure Empty Trash to eliminate the legacy Preferences. Once done, I restarted.

I logged-in to my legacy user account, opened TextEdit and Shift+R again failed to work. I logged-out of that account, logged-in to the new account and Shift+R works. Utterly maddening.

Other suggestions or ideas?

I have a similar problem to this (or my mom does with my old iMac). She cannot type "z" (neither upper nor lower case). I will try this and see if that is the problem.

Thanks!

OK I have zapped the P RAM and it fixed the shift r. But now half my keys open Mission Control. 😠

Now it's just down to numbers 3 and 4 that open Mission Control. Odd.

weirdest thing... it fixed itself. everything is working fine now. 😕

BTW, I'd tried the zapping the PRAM approach years ago, and again after the most recent clean-installs, and it didn't make any difference.