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Question

Interesting Goings On

  • November 28, 2011
  • 5 replies
  • 26 views
A
  • Anonymous

I imaged a slew of MacBooks (the polycarbonate white ones) this summer. All worked well until … a week ago, two of these fellas decided to not function correctly.

The track pad will move the mouse, but the click does not work. An attached mouse will move the cursor, but again, no clicking. The keyboard does not function. I get full functionality of mouse and keyboard through ARD, just not on the machine itself.

Thought it might just be a software issue, so I re-imaged. Here is where things are weird. Using Startup Manager, I am able to use the keyboard and mouse to select net boot or any other option. Once I get into the Casper boot image, I have no mouse or keyboard functionality again.

The fact that I have mouse and keyboard control during startup manager tells me that it is not a hardware issue. But what nothing has changed with the machine to make the NetBoot not work when it did before.

Any suggestions?
-- "When I die I'm going to leave my body to science fiction." ~Steven Wright
-- Lance L. Lennon
District Technology Director
Eagle Grove Community School District
515-448-4749

    5 replies

    C
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    • cdaley
    • New Contributor
    • November 28, 2011

    Hi Lance.

    We had the same issue with a batch of macbooks recently. The trackpad and keyboard would not respond at the apple login window, casper imaging and at a bootpicker window intermittently. We had one instance where i went to login and what i typed came up 5 minutes later.

    After the same sort of troubleshooting you did, i spoke to our local apple technician and he said it wad a logic board issue. We had 4 laptops with the issue, he replaced the boards under warranty and the issue was fixed.

    It didn't appear to be a h/w fault with me either, because it would work sometimes or respond eventually. It may be worth speaking to your local h/w technician.

    Cheers Chris.

    Sent from my iPhone

    F
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    • fsjjeff
    • Valued Contributor
    • November 29, 2011

    Funny story that may (or not) be applicable:

    When we got our first set of the rounded Macbooks and went to image them we had a similar problem with trackpad/keyboard randomly not working... After much testing and troubleshooting we discovered that if the Macbook is sitting on top of another Macbook, the trackpad/kb problem pops up.

    Our techs were imaging a batch of laptops, then closing the lid and putting a second batch on top to image. Then they'd clear it all away and do a third set, followed by a 4th set on top of the 3rd and so on. Every second set had major trackpad/kb problems.

    Not sure if the newest machines have this same 'issue' or not, but might be worth a quick test to see if this is the same problem.

    Jeff

    N
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    • nessts
    • Valued Contributor
    • November 29, 2011

    MacBook Pros do the same thing, if you put the laptop in the right spot
    the screen will not wake up, a lot of that stuff runs off magnetic signals
    I think and if you get one too close to another that is in sleep/closed
    mode the second one thinks it is supposed to sleep or have the screen off
    as well.
    -- Todd Ness
    Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
    Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
    HP Enterprise Services

    D
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    • dmcmillen
    • New Contributor
    • November 29, 2011

    This is hilarious... once we had a "stuck spacebar" that turned out to be a second (unknown to me) bluetooth keyboard that had been shoved under a stack of paper. Imagine my surprise when the stuck spacebar problem continued after disconnecting the primary USB keyboard. Admittedly it's never hilarious until after the fact.

    Regards,

    Drew McMillen, Desktop Engineering Team Lead
    NIEHS Tech Services Team
    (w) 919/313-7683
    (m) 919/257-8333
    mcmillen at niehs.nih.gov
    https://apps.niehs.nih.gov/itsupport/web

    bentoms
    Forum|alt.badge.img+35
    • bentoms
    • Hall of Fame
    • November 29, 2011

    Similar,

    Cannot Launch Applications From NetBoot Image
    I just spent too many hours struggling with a newly created NetBoot Image that booted, but would not launch any applications from the dock & the item that was due to launch at login didn’t (Casper Imaging). However, if i logged out the NetBoot user & logged back in, all was well!

    Come midnight (I was remotely NetBooting a machine), I decided to cut my losses & come in next day which was my day off.

    Turns out the NetBoot was fine, the issue was simply that the iMac was building had a PC Keyboard connected & not a Mac one!!

    As the tagline says, doing the donkey work to make you look like a smart ass!!

    Regards,

    Ben.

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