12-12-2008, 07:53 PM

I hate to be a newb , but, I have a final project due on monday and need to get my mac functioning again.
the last few days my keyboard and mouse (they are USB) had been acting strange, would suddenly stop working but unplugging them and plugging them back in corrected the problem for a little while.
Today, they just plain stopped. Nothing I do gets them to work again, (tried restarting, unplugging them, putting them in different usb ports) and in fact I am posting from someone else's computer since I cant do a **** thing on mine...cant afford to buy a new mouse/keyboard, need to figure this out!
I appreciate any help on the subject.

12-12-2008, 09:05 PM

Try another USB keyboard as sometimes the terminals and/or cables short out. What does Apple System Profiler say under <About this Mac>More Info>USB. Any ports or devices appearing.

Running Repair Permissions sometimes will restore a defective oprt but not cables.

12-12-2008, 09:33 PM

I have not yet tried this things but will, thank you very much for the reply.

12-13-2008, 02:04 PM

If Harry's suggestion hasn't worked, and the peripherals have failed, consider using a generic brand of keyboard and mouse. They're inexpensive. You do not need to purchase Apple branded peripheral hardware to work with a Mac and OS X.
[I happily use both generic keyboard and mouse, and have done for 3 years now.]