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February 13, 2008

troubleshooting

Aluminum keyboards and startup keys

Posted Feb. 13, ’08, 8:29 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Troubleshooting

Keyboard One of the primary reasons I bought Apple’s new thin aluminum keyboard is that as an Apple keyboard, I could count on using it for startup hotkeys like “C” for cookie for starting up from an optical disc or option to choose from any startup capable disk. Reader John hasn’t had this experience.

To summarize, the Option and “C” keys at startup do not let me startup from a DVD, including the Apple Install Disk or restart in OSX 10.4.11 by holding down the Option key once a DVD has been selected as the start-up disk . DVD’s can’t be ejected at startup by holding down the Eject button. All of these functions work correctly by exchanging keyboards and using the original one that came with my iMac.

He’s had a protracted battle with this keyboard which has involved numerous Genius encounters without resolution. In fact, one of them suggested this might be a Tiger/Leopard difference, which John didn’t think was true (and I agree with John on). However, my Mac Pro is running Leopard and the “C” key works just fine.

Have any of you gentle readers had any similar problems with this new keyboard?


13 Comments

wesg Author Profile Page said:

My MacBook with Leopard can select the boot partition fine with the Aluminum keyboard. It's currently my favourite keyboard to type on.

February 13, 2008 9:19 AM
Anonymous said:

The alum usb keyboard (C and Option keys) did not work on my early 2006 intel imac either, I had to use another USB keyboard to boot from DVD

February 13, 2008 10:23 AM
Simon Padt said:

You can use the alt key... Works fine for me.

February 13, 2008 1:23 PM
Anonymous said:

Maybe because you only hold 'C' (and not Option) to start from the CD

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

February 13, 2008 1:42 PM
baliset Author Profile Page said:

I always thought that the key to press to boot from the Optical drive was "C", by itself, not with the option key.

Another way is to press the "option" key and select the boot device from the open firmware dialog that comes up.

February 13, 2008 2:00 PM
Freakhead said:

Yep early 2k6 intel iMac and I can't hold down option during boot to get to the O/S selection screen. I need to use my old keyboard.

February 13, 2008 5:57 PM
Anonymous said:

Yeah, OK so I meant (C OR Option keys) not AND, in fact none of the keyboard keys work before it starts up. plugged a dell keyboard in and they worked fine.

February 14, 2008 12:36 AM
Anonymous said:

I think the point is that if you use the aluminum keyboards on a mac that did not originally come with them, there may be problems. Other USB keyboards work, and the problem does not exist with macs that came with the alum keyboard.

February 14, 2008 12:40 AM
amusicsite said:

Had the same problem with my Intel mini and bought the new keyboard as a replacement and have no other keyboard now!

February 14, 2008 4:16 AM
Anonymous said:

Yes I has same problem.
The IMac is restart again, and again, if I press "C" key.
I call local support, he said that is hardware problem.
I don't agree with him. Everything for my computer is fine.
How can I solve the problem. my Imac is using a Tiger 10.4.11

February 14, 2008 7:25 AM
Jeremy Brown said:

I guess you'll just have to go to system preferences, and choose to start up from the cd (or other partition or external drive) via the Startup Disk preference pane. I'm not sure if this will work for booting inoto a windows bootcamp partition (it probably won't) i'm guessing), but it will certainly work for everything else.

February 14, 2008 8:32 AM
Anonymous said:

the keyboard software update is installed,
But it seem the restart problem is still here, not fixed.
Also the "D" is same problem again.

February 20, 2008 8:10 AM

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