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MacBookPro 2.2 i7

My B key is stuck as a capital letter. Caps lock and shift have no effect. The B key is always capitalized no matter what in every program. If I hold down B and type another letter the other letter is capitalized too, as if I was holding down the shift key. I have tried internet suggestions aBout AccessiBility and Text to Speech and none of those have had an effect. It started off intermittent and now is constant. One day it was the B G and T keys But then that stopped and now it's just the B key again, But if I hold down any other key and type a T or a G they are capitalized too (doesn't happen with any other keys). B, G and T Being in a diagonal row may Be a clue... Anyone have any ideas? Doesn't seem like it's an issue with just a key Being dirty or something But mayBe it is. I don't even know if it's software or hardware. I've had other laptops apart and it was no fun so not looking forward to that if that's what's called for. I'm aBout 3.5 hours from the nearest Apple store. I'd have to ship it Both ways and pay for repair if it comes to that.

Any ideas really appreciated!

Just now realized the hyphen key is now stuck as an underscore
and the left Bracket (next to the letter P) acts as if shift is on too

Have you tried it with another keyboard? USB

Thanks for the reply rickorick. Just tried it - USB keyboard works fine.
Don't what this means, but if I hold down the b key on the USB keyboard and then type b on the Macbook it's now NOT capitalized. And now the hyphen key and bracket are working correctly on the Macbook when they weren't an hour ago.

That's because Apple decided to market it that way. It's a hold over from the "PowerBook" moniker.

Sure sounds like a hardware issue... like a bad key on your MacBook? I'm no expert, but only thing I could try perhaps is maybe if it's something corrupted very deep, you could power it down, remove the battery, disconnect the power cable, and let it sit for an hour or or two, then put the battery back, reconnect AC and boot it up.

Probably not the best advice, but sometimes starving a computer system of ALL power for a while, then restarting it, can help eradicate some corruption lurking deep within.

Thanks James. I popped the key off and blew it out with a can of air and then used the underlying button and it seemed to work more of the time, then put the button back on and it seemed to work less. I zapped the PRAM and that didn't help. It seems to work right after waking from sleep... the key word here is seems... I guess shipping to Apple is probably the next thing.

Might be obvious, but do you have any 3rd party hacks for key macros? Also, have you checked the System Prefs>keyboard to make sure something didn't get weird?

One thing I'd do right away is delete the Finder preferences and reset the PRAM. Restart the Mac holding the CMD+OPT+P+R keys until the startup chime dings (or, if you prefer dongs ) three times. Or maybe think of it as ding-dong-ding, or even ramalama-ding-dong.

I ding-donged the PRAM several times and the witch is not dead. I didn't delete Finder prefs though. No macros or any stunt keymabobs on this machine. This isn't a studio computer just personal. My synth group is talking me into replacing the keyboard myself, vs Apple. Gulp. I remember Disassembling Pismo. Dark and bleak days them was.

I hear that. I've disassembled and partially assembled a few laptops but they were not the one piece aluminum chassis types. I don't think I want to playing with those or any laptop again in terms of teardowns.

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:I hear that. I've disassembled and partially assembled a few laptops but they were not the one piece aluminum chassis types. I don't think I want to playing with those or any laptop again in terms of teardowns.

I hear ya. Not good with cars here, either. I like my knuckles non-bleeding.

philbrown wrote:Thanks James. I popped the key off and blew it out with a can of air and then used the underlying button and it seemed to work more of the time, then put the button back on and it seemed to work less. I zapped the PRAM and that didn't help. It seems to work right after waking from sleep... the key word here is seems... I guess shipping to Apple is probably the next thing.

Bummer.

Hopefuly, you have AppleCare. If so, see if you can make an appointment to take it in.