Hi - When I type, the upper case letter "c" does not appear or activate.....yet when I use shift on the right side of the keyboard, it works OK. Anything I can do to correct the situation ?
Thanks
It seems the key is working. Which keyboard is it?
Do you have a special keyboard mapping or a language setting other than English?
Is this happening within a certain application or with the OS in general?
Z-Mac,
I have the standard (?) keyboard which came with my G5 a couple of years ago. The problem is with the letter "c" which appears OK in lower case but will not show in upper case - - I had it showing as cap c with the right hand side shift key, but that has also disappeared.
I use canadian english as the language of choice.....and all other letters appear to work ok..
as in :AB DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ....and in lower case abcdef etc. etc.
it appears to be with OS in general - i.e. with e-mail, Apple script, Apple Works and MS office.
Looking forward to your potential solution...
Thanks
Two easy things to try.
Compressed air: blow it into the keyboard everywhere around the key. If you can, open the keyboard and blow air into the spaces. If it's a mechanical problem caused by debris, this may solve it.
Ubuntu Live CD: download, burn and boot the Ubuntu Live CD. Test the keyboard in Ubuntu. If it works correctly, it's a software problem. If not, you know you have a hardware problem.
Quote from: z-mac on February 20, 2009, 03:31:32 PM
Two easy things to try.
Compressed air: blow it into the keyboard everywhere around the key. If you can, open the keyboard and blow air into the spaces. If it's a mechanical problem caused by debris, this may solve it.
Ubuntu Live CD: download, burn and boot the Ubuntu Live CD. Test the keyboard in Ubuntu. If it works correctly, it's a software problem. If not, you know you have a hardware problem.
One more option: Plug the keyboard into another computer; even a PC would do. If shift-C fails there, then you'd know it's the keyboard. If not, then unfortunately we'd still have a mystery.
Hi Airforce,
As the '"c" key works, and the shift key, evidenced by your typing, the problem is not either of the two keys, but rather the combination of shift and c not working. This is typically caused by a bad trace on the printed circuit board - spill any nasty liquids in your keyboard lately? Pop drinks and fruit juices can eat through a trace in about one minute, even water can cause unusual keyboard behaviour, if not outright failure. You usually can't fix the cola-type problems, but dampness can be overcome with a hair dryer and disassembly.
Ben has the right idea - simply plug the keyboard into another known-good USB-equipped machine and test the keyboard. If it works there, then your problem is software-related and a re-install would be called for. I would bet it is a bad trace - toss the keyboard and replace it, the time it would take to track down and repair the bad trace, if it was even repairable, would not be worth it - new keyboards of decent quality can be had for anywhere from $20 and up.
Ubuntu? I just had to ask...
Happy Mac'ing,
Dan
Dan,
Did as you suggested - - took the keyboard to Carbon Computing ( I used caps lock to get the capital letter c ) and tried it on one of their new machine and it worked fine. 'Twas suggested that I was pressing down on control and shift at the same time and as I know that I did not, I brought it back and tried again without success.
I bought a new keyboard today and plug it in with grea anticipation - but the result was the same - no capital letter c......
The Tech at Carbon C said he'd never heard of something like that happening....
So I'm back begging for new ideas.
Airforce
Oh goodie, a problem that defies explanation. I don't like re-installing OS X entirely to solve what seems to be a simple problem, but it is now evident you may have a very unusual software problem, i.e. if a new keyboard and your now-known-good keyboard both fail to produce a capital-c, then as Sherlock Holmes said (I think), you must consider the impossible.
A few things to check before going to the terminal stage of re-installing though. First, are you plugging the keyboard directly into the Mac, and if so, have you tried a different USB port? Secondly, have you installed any software that may have added third-party input managers to your system, game controllers, mouse software, anything like that? You can look in this directory to see if there are any of these present on your system: Library/Input Methods. If there's anything in there, it could be causing problems. And, thirdly, speaking of input managers - what keyboard setting do you have selected in the International/Input Menu tab of your System Preferences? I don't imagine this is the problem - but you should have either Canadian English or U.S. selected. There is also a utility called Keyboard Viewer available there which will display which keystrokes are being detected by the operating system.
If none of these help, then I think your next move is to re-install the OS, unless someone has a better suggestion?
Happy Mac'ing,
Dan
So you know your keyboard(s) is (are) working.
If you boot your computer with the Live CD of a different OS (such as but not limited to Ubuntu), you'll prove whether your computer has a problem or something in OS X is not working correctly.
If it's your computer, you take it to the shop. If it's your OS, I suspect that re-installing will take you less time than it would to determine what has gone wrong with the keyboard driver. (But I'd be tempted to look at that file, myself.)
Of course... ! You have a Mac OS X Install disk? Boot from that to see if it truly is your OS that is somehow corrupted. If you can boot from an Installer CD, and after you choose English from the first screen. a Utilities menu will appear in the menu bar and you can open the Terminal program and test your keyboard in the terminal window. If it works there, then you definitely have a software gremlin and a re-install will be required - not such a bad thing as long as you have that install CD! Good Luck and...
Happy Mac'ing!
Dan
Airforce, have you solved the problem?
sorry for the delay - hadda be away on emergency basis.
Yes my keyboard problem has been solved. As well as MUGOO, I went to a site called Tech Support Guy where there are a number of Forums where you can get help. My saviour (a Lady called Yankee Rose )_ said that I should :
....."check out the Speech pane in System Preferences to see if somehow that keystroke combination (C ... in other words Shift/c) is set up for speech or listening? I'd check that first. I would also suggest resetting the PRAM. (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379)".....
i checked the Speech pane and voila !!! Keyboard problem solved.... and I did not have to reset the PRAM.
So there - and I will also be advising a couple of "techs" who work at Mac stores....haha...
Cheers and thank you to all of you who offered possible solutions.
Airforce
Well that's a new one for me.
So when you were trying to type Shift+C all this time, was your Mac saying something to you?
(o:
Well, I'll have to file that one away for future reference! I guess you might have clued in if you had some text selected when you typed shift-C, because your Mac would then given you a clue - it would "Speak selected text when the key is pressed".
How weird - any idea if you actually changed this from the default setting which is the rather safer combination of command-control-s? Otherwise, the preferences must have somehow corrupted, which is possible, but the odds of the preference file only being corrupt enough to still work, but with a different legitimate keystroke are pretty phenomenal.
Don't be too hard on the techs, I'm sure they would appreciate receiving this piece of knowledge, I know I did. Like I said, I hate having to reinstall an entire operating system because one tiny preference file somewhere is wrong, but you would almost have to be psychic to have squirreled this one out - congrats to Yankee Rose, I bet she had a previous experience with this quirk...
Happy Mac'ing!
Dan
Well, it looks like this problem is not so strange, in fact it appears to be so not so strange that on April 7th of this year, Apple posted this on their Knowledge Base as part of their "keyboard problem" solution summary. And I quote:
Some keys don't work as expected
Open Speech preferences in System Preferences. If "Speak selected text when the key is pressed" is enabled, the key combination to speak text cannot be used for other purposes or used to type text--change to a more obscure key combination (try to use more modifier keys such as Shift, Command, Option, and Control). Or, simply disable the "Speak selected text when the key is pressed" option.
Hmph!? How is this key combination being set to anything but "a more obscure key combination"? Ya gotta wonder...
Happy Mac'ing
Dan