keyboardmacossnow leopard
I have a weird problem. A few keyboard combinations seem to have stopped responding. Among others Option-8 and Option-9 do not work. In fact everything from Option-3 to Option-0 do not work. Option-shift-8 etc. works fine though.
I have had the problem previously on another mac (iMac, Snow Leopard, with full size keyboard) and am now experiencing it on my MacBook Air (Lion). Last time the problem solved itself via a reinstall of OS X.
Any guesses?
I think this is a bug in Mac OS X and has something to do with the way the keyboard shortcuts for Spaces are processed. Try this:
If you simply turn off Spaces, the above won't happen and whatever order you press the keys in, they will continue to beep. If you change the number of spaces to only two, then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 will give you a beep until you've pressed either 1 or 2. I don't know of an application in which those keys have a non-Spaces functionality and would do something useful other than beep, so I haven't been able to try what happens in such an application. In any case, I don't think you need to worry there's something wrong with your keyboard or the way you've configured the keyboard bindings; it seems to be a bug in Mac OS X.
Edit: Try the above in a new folder in which you've created folders named "1", "2" and so on. I find the Finder's behavior in this case somewhat strange: if you press CTRL-8, it will beep yet also switch the selection to the folder named "8". But again, pressing 5 through 9 will neither beep, nor change the selected folder once you've pressed any of 1 through 4.
Have you tried Change Keyboard Type in System Preferences -> Keyboard?
Best Answer
I assume you mean the key combinations traditionally used to generate extended characters like bullets, umlats, and so on. There are several places to check.
Check System Preferences : Language & Text : Input Sources to make sure you are using the correct keyboard mapping (for example, "U.S."):
It can be very easy to switch your keyboard layout by accident, so you may want to be sure only one layout is checked.
If that does not help, look in System Preferences : Keyboard : Keyboard Shortcuts and see if there are any shortcuts assigned to the combinations you are trying to use: