MacBook – Slow Keys at log-in screen means I can’t access laptop!

keyboardmacbook pro

I have a Macbook Air that's less than a year old and woke up today to an issue.

When logging in, I have to hold each key down for 3 seconds before it'll recognise that I'm pressing it – so it'll end up writing four of the same letter in my password and I have to strategically hold down the backspace for 3 seconds to delete the three extra letters. As you can imagine, it took me about 15 minutes to get it right and actually get in to my laptop.

I followed all the advice on other blogs – the issue is completely gone when I boot in safe mode so it's not a hardware issue as far as I can tell. I did a clean install of OS and problem persisted.

The Slow Keys checkbox is unticked so I just have no idea why this is happening.

I should not that once logged in, the keyboard works perfectly fine!

Any and all advice greatly appreciated!

Best Answer

If you did a clean install, that would suggest a hardware issue. It's possible you've got a corrupt install media, too. This can happen if you've created a USB flash drive installer and the USB drive you have doesn't like the block size you've specified (or the default) when using the dd command.

Don't forget to reset the PRAM, as well as the SMC. Apple's instructions:

  1. Shut down your Mac.
  2. Find Command (⌘), Option, P, and R on your keyboard.
  3. Turn on your Mac.
  4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys immediately after you hear the startup sound.
  5. Hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time.
  6. Release the keys.