MacBook Pro 15″ 2010 keyboard won’t work in login screen – Yosemite

keyboardmacbook pro

I did an update to Yosemite yesterday, but today I turned the computer on and tried to type my password in. I couldn't because the keys I P A D K L M C don't seem to be working, I have tried three different keyboards and none work. Two of the keyboards are official Apple. I tried them in my windows laptop and all the keys are working fine. I then booted into the recovery on the MBP and I could type with all the keys. I thought it was fixed so restarted. I then had the exact same problem and am at a loss of what to do. I've tried Apple support, but they are about as useful as a chocolate tea pot. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Best Answer

Try this...

Start your Mac from the recovery partition. Once it's booted, go to the Utilities menu item and select Terminal. Type in the following command (substituting the OS X startup disk name if different from Macintosh HD)...

rm /Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist

...and then restart your MacBook.

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Macbook pro out of warranty, two keys not working in built in keyboard. Options

Your two options are roughly;

You can still take it into the Apple Store, and they can repair it. Obviously, for a cost. Your question notes that you appear to need a whole new keyboard tray, as it's not just a key dead at the surface-level. I don't know how much this would cost, you could perhaps call ahead to save you a trip and essentially just get an expected quote.
Fix it yourself. I love iFixIt for this purpose, start at their MacBook Pro parts page, pick your MacBook Pro's size/model, and check the price for the "upper case" part. I can't imagine that specific key death could be anything other than the keyboard tray and particular circuit boards attached to it.

MacOS – No Keys Repeating on New MacBook Pro After Changing Key Repeat Speed

It probably wouldn't help, but you could try changing the keys directly in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist or ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences.*.plist.

defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 2
defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 15
defaults -currentHost write -g KeyRepeat -int 2
defaults -currentHost write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 15

2 and 15 are the fastest settings shown in System Preferences. The changes aren't applied until you log out and back in.

The file in the ByHost folder doesn't normally have keys for the settings, but it has precedence over the normal .GlobalPreferences.plist.

You can remove the keys with the delete subcommand:

defaults delete -g KeyRepeat
defaults delete -g InitialKeyRepeat
defaults -currentHost delete -g KeyRepeat
defaults -currentHost delete -g InitialKeyRepeat

Best Answer

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Macbook pro out of warranty, two keys not working in built in keyboard. Options

MacOS – No Keys Repeating on New MacBook Pro After Changing Key Repeat Speed

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