Can't type??!??!

Ok, this is a very strange problem. I don't know if these two issues are related entirely, but they both render my computer useless right now, so it's kinda important that I figure them out.

Just a few minutes ago, I realized that I was no longer able to type anything into the search box in Firefox. Thinking that it had simply frozen (Firefox locks up on me on occasion, I simply quit it and try again usually), I force quit it from the dock and restarted, with no luck. I tried again, with the same result. Thinking maybe a plugin had gone awry, I hit -space to pull up spotlight, intending to open Activity Monitor to take a look. That's when I realized that Firefox wasn't the (only) issue. My keyboard no longer inputs any data into any application except when I am asked for my password, or when I log into another account. It's not hardware, because it does work fine for those purposes, and I'm using it right now in a new account I managed to get set up using copy and paste. However, restarting, repairing permissions, everything I can think of to solve the problem has failed.

While working on this, and this is what I'm not sure is related, I noticed that none of my menu extras loaded on login or restart, and the spotlight icon was flashing (visible then not visible again). I can't click on it, my airport, battery meter, volume, and clock don't show up at all, and I am able to quit two other programs that put their own icons up there on their own.

This is really weird, but could also be very bad for me if I don't get a chance to take this thing down to the Apple store before my class assignment is due this weekend. Any help would be great!

jW

Nope, numlock is off, checked that early on. I've restarted now about 3 times, once into single user mode to run the disk repair.

jW

Just figured out something very interesting. In the Apple System Profiler and in Safari, I can use the arrow keys, but not in any other application I've tried. I want to try to see if my keyboard driver or layout is corrupted, but I don't know how to go about resetting/reinstalling something like that.

jW

2.0.0.9, I think. I don't think Firefox was messing up, however, I think it was something lower level like the keyboard driver. I did an archive and install of the OS and it works fine now, so I think the problem's solved, but I never did figure it out completely.

jW

You're right, MisterMe, it is 2.0.0.7. I was going from memory since I wasn't at home when I typed that.

And no, it wasn't a problem that would be fixed by force quitting the Finder, I actually tried that except I couldn't get the force quit key command to work (I could have done it from the menu, but that was the point where I just decided to restart the first time).

jW