If your MacBook's nonexistent Num Lock is stuck, check Mouse Keys

[kpreid]

Bought a new MacBook with Leopard installed and used Migration Assistant (transferring from an iBook G3). Upon logging in to the primary account, the letter and number keys, Return, and some others stopped working. Returning to the login window, they continued to not work (as tested in the password-entry field) except for the Num-lock number pad region (which seemed strange, since this keyboard doesn't have a num-lock key or keypad markings). An external full USB keyboard worked normally.

The fix that worked (found in a web search) was to disable Mouse Keys (in Universal Access preferences).

Comments

Thank you for this post

[(Anonymous)]

It got me unstuck.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you! This was driving me crazy, but I hit the Option key 5x to turn off Mouse Keys, and voila, I'm unstuck.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, thanks a million! This solved my problem too :-)

My 11 year old was playing a game on his user id and somehow the keyboard got stuck in num lock mode.

In system preferences under Universal Access preferences I found that Mouse Keys was set to off, but anyway the keys were still frozen to num lock. So I set Mouse Keys to on and then closed the window. Then I re-opened Mouse & Trackpad under Universal Access and set Mouse Keys to off and - PROBLEM WAS SOLVED!

Thanks so much for this great advice :-)

[(Anonymous)]

FINALLY - someone with the same problem!!! Thanks - it worked.

Still good advice almost 7 years later

[ahmad ragab (from livejournal.com)]

I was losing my mind!

Thanks