Keyboard becomes unresponsive on various Apple portables

We previously noted that several owners of MacBooks are experiencing an issue where the keyboard and trackpad suddenly become unresponsive, forcing the user to reboot (after first shutting down by holding the power key) in order to regain control.

The tool USB Prober (part of Apple's USB debugging kit for developers) has been successful in reviving keyboard/trackpad responsiveness in some cases. Unfortunately, launching the application requires connection of an external keyboard (via USB).

It now appears that this issue is more widespread, and affects models other than the newly introduced MacBook (though that unit may be more susceptible). Several MacBook Pro and PowerBook owners have now corroborated the issue.

MacFixIt reader Kevin writes:

"Other portable models also having the issue: I have a G4 powerbook 1.33 and since Mac OS X 10.4.6 it seems 2 times in the last 2 months keyboard/trackpad/external USB mouse completely non-responsive. No spinning wheel. No idea what the cause."

Another reader found the problem in conjunction with a system migration from an older system:

"Though I'm not on a MacBook, I'm using a G4 PowerBook, I had similar issues with the keyboard on two separate machines.

"What I found out in my trials with this problem was that I utilized the transfer data from the older iBook (firewire target disk mode) to transfer the data to my new PowerBook. Once I stopped using this transfer method and just copied over my important files I no longer experienced any issues with the keyboard going out."

Finally, MacFixIt reader Bruno writes that he eventually had to resort to an Apple authorized repair center for the same issue with a MacBook Pro:

"My MacBook Pro (2.16Gz, 15in) is less then a month old, and the only add on it has on is an extra 1Gb memory, Apple certified.

"It started with a similar problem described in the article above: keyboard and trackpad stopped working, need to reboot to fix it. Happened 3 or 4 times in the same day, what was quite annoying. Plugging an USB mouse or Keyboard worked.

"Then, in the next day, both keyboard and trackpad stopped working completely. No amount of reboot would make them work. Being a recent Mac user, I didn't know about the USB Prober, so, don't know if that would have helped.

"I spent the weekend trying to solve the issue. Tried booting from the install CD and on the first time I did that, Keyboard and Trackpad worked fine. But it was a one time only thing, after that, even booting from the install CD would not make the keyboard and trackpad work again.

"In a last attempt, I re-installed the whole system, formatting the disk and all. To no avail. A friend from Apple tried some other things, like booting from another MacBook Pro disk, and he also checked the keyboard cables that are behind the battery compartment. Nothing helped.

"Looking at system profiler, in the USB bus, neither keyboard nor trackpad would show up. But I only checked that after re-installing the system.

"In all cases, a external keyboard or mouse works fine. The rest of the system seems to be fine also.

"After 3 days trying to make this work, I turned the MacBook to a repair shop, and I'm still waiting to find out what happened."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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