Keyboard and Trackpad suddenly dead!

[sanPietro98]

My wife's first generation MBA (running Snow Leopard) was working fine, then she put it in sleep mode. When it awoke, the keyboard and trackpad were completely unresponsive. We tried rebooting several times (had to do a hard-shutdown since we couldn't interact with it). Still dead.

I was able to use screen sharing and remotely login to the MBA. Other than the keyboard and trackpad, it works fine via VNC and remote desktop.

Are there any diagnostics I can perform to get a better idea of what's happening? Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pixellated]

Connect a USB mouse to see if it works?

 

[me_94501]

Hmm, odd; I've had something similar happen to my MacBook--woke it up from sleep and the keyboard and trackpad stopped working. The only difference was that shutting it down completely then restarting cleared it up (though I waited a couple hours before starting it up again).

 

[sanPietro98]

Connect a USB mouse to see if it works?

Strangely enough, we didn't have a mouse handy at the time. But that's on my list of things to try. Would that help diagnose anything about the problem? Are the USB port and keyboard on the same bus internally?

Thanks.

 

[coast1ja]

If the external keyboard works, it's most likely a hardware issue, and not a software issue. But it could still allow you to do an SMC and Pram Reset.

Just hope it's not a hardware issue, as the keyboard replacement may not seem like a difficult fix, but in the unibodies it's a Level 3 repair (read: super expensive).