USB keyboard suddenly stopped working in Mojave

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USB keyboard suddenly stopped working in Mojave

I upgraded my Mac Mini (late 2012) to Mojave over a month ago and everything has been working great. But today I opened my contacts app and discovered I could not type in the app. Oddly, I could still type in the already open messages app. I figured it was a glitch and rebooted. After that, I can't even type to enter my login password!

I have a Dell windows keyboard, but it has worked fine up to now.

The keyboard seems to work except in Mojave. I booted in recovery mode and could type in the apps there. I also have bootcamp windows installed. Booted to that and everything works fine also. I then reset the PRAM and SMC. Didn't help. A web search suggested I boot with CMD+S and remove the

/var/db/.AppleSetupDone

file, so I did that. Now when it boots, it starts the setup process, but when the "Select your keyboard" box shows up, it is empty (previously it showed my keyboard as a choice).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Do I need to buy a new keyboard?

Mac mini, macOS Mojave (10.14)

Posted on Nov 2, 2018 9:20 AM

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Answer 1

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donw1128 Author

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Nov 3, 2018 4:52 AM in response to donw1128

Replying to myself, just in case anyone else has this problem. I tried another keyboard but no change. It is definitely an OS software problem. But I was able to restore the disk to a time-machine backup from a known good date. After that, the keyboard and everything worked again! Thank God for time-machine!

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Answer 2

Nov 14, 2018 2:48 PM in response to donw1128

I have the same problem. I just upgraded to MacOS 10.14.1 yesterday and my USB keyboard and mouse stopped working. I restarted with the Option-Command-P-R keys held down with no success. There doesn't appear to be a way in System Preferences to select or choose a USB Keyboard. I prefer to use a hardwired keyboard on my 27 inch iMac. I had a similar problem when I first upgraded to Mojave a few months ago but the problem went away on its on after the computer was restarted several times. This time that trick doesn't seem to be working. Any suggestions?

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Answer 3

donw1128 Author

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9 points

Nov 15, 2018 2:09 AM in response to Hawk Magnussen

The only solution I found was to revert back to a previous date. I rebooted with Command-R and then did Restore from Time Machine Backup, selecting a date when I knew the keyboard was working. If you don't have full-disk backups, my only suggestion is to re-install from scratch.

At the time I was running MacOS 10.14. After getting things working again and ensuring I had a good backup, I upgraded to 10.14.1. The next day my Mac completely crashed and would not reboot, even in safe mode! I only had Time Machine backups with 10.14 so I restored from the most recent, installed 10.14.1 again, and things have been working for a couple of weeks now. Keeping my fingers crossed it was a fluke.

Anyhow, best of luck.

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USB keyboard suddenly stopped working in Mojave

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