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16" - keyboard and trackpad locking up - Fusion related?

G

Glenny2lappies

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 29, 2006
582
421
Brighton, UK
Anyone else seen problems with the 16" keyboard and trackpad locking up?

Was at a meeting, opened the laptop and the keyboad and trackpad was frozen. The touch bar worked, so locked the machine again and unlocked it. Keyboard and trackpad still locked. Closed the lid and left it for a couple of mins. Opened again and it worked.

At the moment I have the laptop connected to a Cinema Display. Been using the external keyboard & mouse. Tried typing on the laptop and have discovered the keyboard and trackpad on it has locked up. Running some other software and can't shut it down now.


Is this a 'known' issue? A bit crap if it is.
 
I came to the forum looking for exactly this post. This just happened to me (keyboard and trackpad out, Touch Bar on). It asked for a Bluetooth device and I was home so I successfully paired a mouse despite no use of the keyboard and trackpad, and then I was able to reboot the machine and it was fine again.

I also had an instance a week ago of the opposite; trackpad and keyboard working but Touch Bar off.

Have been quite happy with the machine otherwise, but these issues do not thrill me...
 
For today's lockup - connected to the Cinema Display; had to put the machine to sleep and close the lid. When it woke the keyboard & trackpad were working again.

Sorry for your woes, but it's good to know it's not just me, i.e. hopefully not a hardware issue.

I perish the thought of having a hardware issue when you can't remove the SSD. Such a stupid idotic thing on Apple's part to make the SSD non-removable - just for greed and ignoring customer's needs to keep hold of their data.
 
I close my lid and re-open it a lot, several times a day. Had mine two weeks now, not had this issue once. Perhaps the cable is loose inside? - I'd exchange it.
 
Seems like its a software issue as it appears to be happening on both the 15" and 16" MacBook Pro's running Catalina.

I have had the 16" since launch and haven't had this issue yet but will keep an eye out for it.
 
Glenny2lappies said:
Never seen a message popup. Just can't use the keyboard & trackpad. To stress, this is intermittent.

I do run Fusion. Hmmm.
Click to expand...
Yup, intermittent for me too.
The message dialog popup doesn't appear for some time after opening the lid. I can tell it has happened because the keyboard backlight never illuminates.

I can usually close the lid again, count to 60, and then re-open the lid... and the keyboard and trackpad will come back to life
 
I started a thread about this over on the VMware community forums the other day.
No one has spoken up as yet.

I'm thinking this is a Fusion-on-Catalina thing, since it didn't happen [at least for me] until I upgraded from Mojave to Catalina. I supposed there's a possibility it could be hardware, but it seems more like a software [maybe keyboard drivers and/or kernel exts] thing.
 
Interesting; On an older Mac (17", High Sierra) Fusion's got a nasty habit of breaking the Bluetooth, meaning that the Mac bluetooth icon changes from three dots to a squiggle and greyed out. Have to do a full reboot to get it back.

Have also had other Fusion-related issues in the past.

I use Fusion for my development machine running Visual Studio. Wondering if this is related as all times this keyboard and trackpad lock-up occurred I had a VM still running.
 
I have had this problem once in two weeks on my 16", I believe Fusion related.

But I have a longer history of similar problems on my 2016 15" where the machine will not wake up if a Fusion VM was had keyboard focus when the MBP went to sleep. The trick mentioned by "patwithamac" also worked for me.

I also try to suspend the VM before leaving the MBP.

I believe this to be the same issue and related to Fusion and MacOS. It is fairly recent for me but I have had it in Mojave too, so I do not think it is Catalina specific.

patwithamac said:
I can usually close the lid again, count to 60, and then re-open the lid... and the keyboard and trackpad will come back to life
Click to expand...
 
Hmm, never even though to blame fusion. But I can see how this could be a possibility.

And I do indeed run Fusion, too. though I can't recall if it has happened without it open or not.

Though the odd thing is the device vanishes completely from the USB device tree, which fusion grabbing a device doesn't do at least normally.
 
IT IS Fusion >:-(((

If you're using fusion, move focus (e.g. change spaces) out of fusion, then close the cover, the keyboard and trackpad are locked up.

I saw the "no bluetooth keyboard and mouse" dialog.

I suppose VMWare will attempt to gouge us for more money so they can fix it with a "new version".
 
I have had my 16" for a couple of months and this just happened to me the other day. Open the lid and it does not recognize keyboard or trackpad. After a couple of minutes they became responsive again. Happened a few times on that day, but have not had it happen since. I do not run VMware Fusion on the laptop.
 
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