Daughter's keyboard was typing symbols. Now she cannot log in after shutdown.

Thanks.

As the keyboard on the laptop is not functioning properly, I realised that if I plug an external keyboard into the laptop in question, I might be able to get logged in.

This is indeed the case &, once logged in, the typing is normal from the external keyboard & I can now see all the bizarre symbols that come up when I type into a sticky note using the laptop's keyboard.

Unfortunately, trying to re-start in safe mode doesn't seem to work from the external keyboard & neither does resetting the PRAM & I can't use the laptop's keyboard to do this because it's not working.

So, any other thoughts?

I've also noticed that if I type Command-Q to quit an application, using the laptop's keyboard, it actually logs out of the user area, as if I'd typed Command-Shift-Q.

I've checked all of the Universal Access setting & they appear to be disabled, but of course, if they were enabled, the external keyboard would reflect that.

I really think the keyboard on the laptop is broken. 😟

Unless anyone can think of anything else I can try?

Right. I think I've made some progess.

After lots of playing with different key commands using both keyboards & a very technical process of bashing some of the modifier keys, it would seem that the alt key was stuck & the shift key still is!

It's now clear that earlier on, certain keyboard commands were consistent with the alt & shift keys being stuck & now the same is true of only the shift key being stuck, so the inbuilt keyboard is typing normally again, but all in caps.

I guess this could be properly broken, but are there any good ways of trying to free up stuck keys?