11-07-2010, 07:45 PM

Hi there! Before I go into detail I have a Late 2008 Macbook White (Upgraded to 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD) so I would have had it two years this Christmas (2010)

Over the last few months, on odd occasions the bottom row of keys completely stop working (by bottom row of keys I mean: Z X C V B N M < > ? and then fn ctrl alt and CMD on the row below. The space bar and right CMD work perfectly as does every other key on the keyboard.

Now this is where it gets really weird. I always thought this was a hardware issue (Loose ribbon connection etc, I just don't have the hours in the day to sit down and take it apart) until my friend gave me his old aluminium apple wireless bluetooth keyboard (the laptop sized one). The bottom row of my keyboard broke again whilst visiting him so we set up this aluminium keyboard of mine.

After it connected I started typing on it and realised that the bottom row on the wireless keyboard wasn't working, however when I typed using the laptop keyboard it worked absolutely perfectly. Really nice and responsive (I'm even typing using it now with the Bluetooth keyboard connected!!)

So basically, without the wireless keyboard connected the bottom row doesn't work on my laptop. However when I connect the wireless keyboard the problem comes off the internal keyboard and onto the wireless one. This has ultimately led me to believe that it's a software fault and not a hardware fault as first thought. We tried the same wireless keyboard on my friends mac and there were no issues what so ever.

If anyone out there has absolutely any idea what the heck is going on then please reply to this and shed some light on my situation!

Thank you!

11-07-2010, 07:57 PM

Personally, I don't have any answers for you. But, if you don't get any other satisfactory answers on here, take it to the Apple store. If nothing else, you can at least find out what is causing it to happen/how to fix it.

11-07-2010, 08:17 PM

Thanks for your reply, unfortunate you couldn't help. I've reformatted a few times this year so I am completely stumped, whether it's some key barring thing or if it's a little like sticky keys on Windows I haven't got a clue!

The laptop keyboard worked perfectly when I had Windows 7 with bootcamp as well which leads me to believe even more that it's an OS issue. It's really annoying as I have a lot of assignments to do and a dissertation to write up, and the deadline is drawing ever closer! I hope someone can help, if not it looks like I'll have to drive an hour to my nearest Apple Store

Cheers