MacBook Pro Keyboard Locked

?????

MacBook Pro Keyboard locked

Hola,

I recently took over my sons macbook pro and it was working fine.

about 2 weeks ago the keyboard just locked up. cursor is stuck on the top left hand corner. powered it on and off several times and still nothing moved.. removed battery, let battery drain all the way and still nothing.. hit any key and nothing. they only button that works is the power button.

Is this a known issue?
Do I need to replace keyboard?

I must admit I am a mac virgin.


Thank is advance for your time and help.

BTW,
My warranty ran out this past August.

Not sure I understand what you mean by the "cursor is stuck in the top left corner"? Does the machine boot to the desktop? In other words, when you boot up, does the Dock (icons at the bottom of the screen) appear?

You need to be more descriptive of the problem - and please include the specs for the MBP. Year, model, and which version of OS X it's running. From your vague description it's possible the hard drive failed. And no, it's probably not a keyboard problem.

Also, to do any kind of trouble shooting on the machine you will need the original installation DVDs.

I don't have the MBP in front of me at the moment.

by cursor I mean the little arrow that you point where you want to go.;D

it was purchased in 08, it boots up just fine and pretty **** quick, unlikely a hard drive error.

I just hooked up a usb mouse and I can move the cursor around but keys are still unresponsive.

Mac OS X ver 10.6.5, processor 2.2ghz Intel core Duo
Memory - 2gb 667 mhz ddr2 sdram

Thank You!

I hope that was the info needed..
thanks again

OK, that gives us some information we can go on. Since the mouse cursor can move around and you have a desktop display, that means the graphics and hard drive are working. The frozen keyboard is something that can be caused by an accidental liquid spill.

Ask your son if he has ever spilled any liquids on the keyboard, even a small amount.

never had anything spilled.. but it has been dropped a time or 2

from what I have been reading, maybe the ribbon cable came loose? or I just need a keyboard..

Dropping it could certainly cause the ribbon cable to come loose or even damage the connector itself. Open it up and check.

Use the instructions to disassemble the keyboard for your model MBP that can be found at iFixit: The free repair manual. Let us know.

I just posted this elsewhere:

Since yesterday I had a similar problem on my MacBook Pro. Everything looked normal, but the keybord and trackpad were not responding (pointer stuck in a corner). I did try to plug in a usb mouse (didn't try a usb keyboard since I don't have any) and with this external mouse it worked fine. Then, with that mouse, I did try to repair the authorisations, didn't help. However, resetting the PRAM (restart computer holding cmd+alt+p+r until after you hear the third consecutive startup Mac sound) did solve the problem. Try this before reinstalling anything...

how are you holding keys down if they don't work?

I tried it and nothing..

I guess it depends whether your problem is hard- or software. In my case apparently the keybord was still responding before the operating system was up and running. When you did it, did you hear the startup sound at all, did you hear it several times or not (with the external mouse, I made sure that the sound was not muted before I restarted the computer)? If the sound is not muted and you don't hear the sound 3 times while holding the keys, then it might indeed be that a cable is disconnected somewhere.
Did you try the procedure with a usb keyboard?

Hi,
For the second time in about a week, my laptop starts with the keyboard and mouse unresponsive. The laptop boots normally and everything looks ok, except that I cannot do anything with the mouse and keyboard... I tried to plug in external usb keyboard and mouse and they work properly (meaning that I can move the pointer and type in letters). Last time I solved it by resetting the PRAM (cmd+alt+p+r, see my previous post just above), but this time I had to restart it at least 5 times before it worked (the 4 first times it booted normally without repeating the startup sound as if the keyboard was not responding even before MacOS is launched). Now it works fine, but as it seems to get worse, I don't know if I'll be able to solve it next time. Any suggestion?
Could it have anything to do with cold temperature? I noticed that it happens essentially when the laptop is very cold (I come to work by bike and it's freezing outside in the morning where I currently stay).

One year later and I still have the same issue..
Bluetooth mouse and wireless keyboard seem to do the trick..
But I must admit I don't use it very often.

But I guess I will have to start, company is moving from Android based cell to Apple.