Keyboard no longer working after VM crash

P

petej

Bit poster
Hey folks...

I'm running a MBP with Parallels 3.0, emulating WinXP Pro. I've had no real issues with Parallels so far (many months), but last night the VM crashed, and upon restart I lost the use of my keyboard. To be clear, I can use the keyboard in OSX just fine, but inside of the WinXP window it is virtually ignored. I say virtually because I can right click with Ctrl-Shift (mouse/trackpad works fine), but trying to type any text does nothing or Alt-Tab does nothing.

I've tried all of these:
- restarting the VM
- restarting the MBP (also tried clearing PRAM)
- upgrading Parallels to the latest (5584)
- using an external keyboard

I've also poked around in the Windows Device Manager. It says I have a PS/2 keyboard. I haven't found any options in the VM configuration to change anything to do with the keyboard.

I've tried searching for this issue extensively, but haven't found anything helpful. I must be missing something. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
Pete.
 
Thanks for the quick response! Yes, I re-installed Parallels Tools as part of the upgrade to 5584. And I just did it again just now to be sure. No change, unfortunately.
 
jackybe67 said:
You can try uninstalling 5584, then reinstalling it . Reboot mac and start parallels again.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... So, when you say uninstall 5584, do you mean uninstall Parallels completely or something else? Wouldn't that nuke my WinXP install? I guess I don't really understand the relationship between the VM and partitions enough.

That said, I'd be surprised if this was related to 5584, since I only upgraded *after* the problem occurred on 5582.

(I neglected to mention that I'm still running Tiger, for whatever that's worth.)
 
Found it: FilterKeys!

Doh. I had FilterKeys turned on (cuz I have a silly habit of hitting the Shift key a lot of times in a row when thinking). I was poking around and noticed the FilterKeys icon in the System Tray. I clicked on it and turned off FilterKeys and was immediately able to use the keyboard again. Turning it back on confirmed the issue. Although I've had it on for a while, so I'm not sure why it all of a sudden started failing. :-(

Anyway, happy to be productive again!
 
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