keyboard problem

Hi,

N, H and Y keys do not work (and maybe others that I haven't discovered yet). Any ideas why this might be. It' driving me mad. Have tried rebooting, software updates, reverting to keyboard defaults and dumping preferences, no luck. Help. Imac 6 months old. Any ideas, guys. Thanks, P89

Was any liquid dripped on it? Seems strange that a group of keys so close to each other would have all stopped working at once without any external influence.

No, I have been meaning to get around to cleaning it, but I haven't touched it. Just a coincidence. Thanks for the reply.

Assuming it's an Apple k/board, and you've finally done the cleaning job, and checked the International keyboard prefs > Input Menu, it might be time to try a little manual persuasion, but you do this entirely at your own risk. It's very basic, but I (and others) have successfully 'restored' a k/b's functions doing one or other - or both - of these procedures.

Unplug the keyboard from your iMac (or hub, whatever).
1. tip the k/b upside down and smack the base a few times with your fingers directly beneath the problem keys.
Reconnect, to see if key function has been restored. If not, unplug the k/b again and ...
2. take each end of the keyboard in your hands, thumbs pointing forward, and then twist the keyboard slightly in opposing directions.
Reconnect the keyboard to see if the problem either persists or has gone away. You may need to repeat the twisting process, applying just a little more stress.

If this amateur osteopathy doesn't work, then a replacement k/b is probably necessary. The resin circuit board beneath the keys may have cracked, or solder joints gone dry, and it is not worth trying to repair it. As a suggestion, a non-Apple usb k/b is cheap, and works just fine with OS X.

Taks, I tried all of tat but to o avail. Apple are sedig me a ew oe, ceers agai, everoe, P89, glad we I ca tpe agai

keyboard: lower case letter or letters stop working

I have solved this problem and used it several times successfully. In my case, it was the lower case “a”, the only letter that would not register and because my password contains an “a” I could not even restart and log in without a work-around. Tried numerous keyboards, cables, and all the rest. A safe boot fixed the problem so I knew it was a corruption glitch. Short version: I just did this two hours ago - July 18, 2009 - only the second or so time in a year, although it took me a lot of preference experimentation the first time to sniff it out.
In my case, went to my “user/library/preferences” folder and dragged onto the desktop the preference “loginwindow.plist” (not the one that starts "com.apple", at least in my case I didn’t need to get rid of that one). Restart and voila! Problem solved. Trash the old "loginwindow.plist" as a new one is created when you restart and you lose no data. To their credit, Apple was very helpful back when it happened the first time, and it was a real conundrum to them as well. I got lucky that it was not too obscure a problem so I didn't have to go through all the preferences and remove them one by one for hours. I found the guilty party fast. Now ya know! Maybe it'll work for you. And a general thanks to all the good people who write these notes and have saved my sanity many, many times. Finally a chance to pay it forward.

is the keyboard wired or wireless?

dude, why don't you buy a new keyboard? thats a rather easy solution dude!

peterson89 said:

Taks, I tried all of tat but to o avail. Apple are sedig me a ew oe, ceers agai, everoe, P89, glad we I ca tpe agai

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this P89, it quite made my day ;D.

Oh, and by the way, we hope your new keyboard from Apple has arrived and has solved the missing key symbols issue. Just thought I ought to mention that.