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mrzeigler

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 15, 2005
159
3
Pittsburgh
My wife has an old MacBook (one of the ones school districts bought en mass for their teachers to use) that's running 10.5.8.

Just about half an hour ago, it started spitting out some wacky font problems. She had been playing some Facebook games, then typed some words in the browser for a search. She noticed that the "f" was appearing as a sort of italicized "f" (it almost looks like how old-time documents would display "s" with calligraphic flair) ... The "f" continued to display incorrectly across every application (including finder windows).

We restarted, and problem persisted. In fact, it worsened. I noticed that the Option key on the left side of the keyboard (without pressing any other keys) would produce the same, funky "f." The option key on the right side of the keyboard didnt create the problem.

Then other characters started going funky. Simply lightly having my fingers come into contact with the keys caused the "f" to repeatedly appear in the open. Document. Then it would key up without me touching the keyboard at all. Touching the [return] key once then deleted everything that had appeared.

Then when I tried to close the download window of Safari, it closed the entire app.

Basically, the machine is acting possessed, and since there are still a handful of days before Halloween, I've ruled out the supernatural.

Any suggestions?
 
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