ejectkeyboard
The Eject key on my iMac (OSX Lion) is no longer working. It was working fine until a few days back, and I remember sleeping my display using the Ctrl+Shift+Eject shortcut, when I first found out about the shortcut, a few days back. But it is no longer working.
How can I fix it?
I always use this combo as well, however this does not immediately sleep my machine in ML.
I believe this is a separate issue at play here. According to Siracusa's ML review, unlike in previous OS X versions, in 10.8 your system is eligible for sleep immediately upon "user inactivity" (the inactivity delay being set in your energy saver settings) unless the currently running apps make "power assertions".
In this case, that key combo is signalling to the OS that "user inactivity" should be triggered right away. In such a case, if your particular app that's downloading stuff does not make power assertions, your system will sleep.
I have come across the same issue generally (not necessarily related to triggering the screen sleep combo). See: Mountain Lion sleeps too aggressively
You can disable the keyboard shortcuts for slow-motion effects by following these instructions:
Open Terminal.
Open the plist file in your user's library preferences folder that contains the setting by typing open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist and hit return.
A window similar to this will open in Xcode:
For items 34, 35, and 37, set enabled to NO.
Close the file, click Save if prompted, and restart your system.
Enjoy.
Note: 34 and 35 may not be present in the plist if you have never opened the Mission Control preferences pane and changed the "Mission Control" or "Application windows" settings. If 37 isn't present either, simply add it yourself.
This process has been tested with:
Best Answer
To fix the problem you should try to see if the problem is hardware or software.
We are going to rule out software because of the hardware testing that was completed.
As noted in OP's comment
Since this problem persisted across multiple macs that strongly points to a hardware issue with the eject key on that Apple wireless keyboard.
If your Mac that the keyboard came with still has some coverage under AppleCare then Apple should cover repairing or replacing the keyboard according to AppleCare - Mac and Apple Display Coverage