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DannyCare

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 7, 2010
2
0
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! :)
 

movieboy23

macrumors regular
Jun 3, 2007
180
0
Based on your OP, I would definitely say that it's a software problem. I would first try to verify and repair the disk by booting off the OS disk and running the Disk Utility tool. If you're not familiar with this, here's the Macrumors guide for restarting your mac:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Restarting_your_Mac

If that doesn't fix it, then you might have to resort to more drastic measures. I know it's a pain, but you might want to do a clean install of the OS to knock out the problem. Based on my experience working on MBs (former Apple technician), this usually fixes the problem.

Good luck.
 

DannyCare

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 7, 2010
2
0
Thank you for your response, I think I've isolated the problem, it seems to be the keyboard as I tried it in another computer and the same keys didn't work. I'm experienced with computers and software etc as I used to build them, I've reformatted my macbook 3 or 4 times this year and I reinstalled just the other day so it's just the keyboard as nothing good was coming from it. I can easily take my Macbook apart and put it together again, and I might just have to do that as I've heard the keyboard ribbon can sometimes affect the functionality of certain keys if not installed correctly.

Thanks for your reply and for taking the time to help me :)
 

maclane

macrumors newbie
May 3, 2008
3
0
Oh my god. This is exact same problem as mine... what was your solution please?

Rich
 
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