Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Pringlis · May 7, 2005, 07:39 AM

Since installing Tiger it seems that around twice a day, at random times, the keys for Expose and Dashboard stop functioning. Each time I check the System Preferences and it appears that the keys have been set to '-'. Setting them to normal fixes it up until the next occurence.

Has anyone else experienced this and have a solution?

Phil333 · Mar 12, 2007, 06:07 AM

I know this thread is two years old but I'm having this problem too all of a sudden, running the latest build of OSX. Thought maybe someone could offer a solution.

Thanks.

P · Mar 12, 2007, 09:45 AM

Have you tried trashing any relevant preference files?

CaptainHaddock · Mar 12, 2007, 11:02 AM

I've had it happen to me twice, but not in recent months. I figured Tiger updates had fixed the problem.

Mithras · Mar 12, 2007, 12:31 PM

I dunno, but my screen corners keep breaking. Very frustrating.

Chuckit · Mar 12, 2007, 01:02 PM

Do you happen to play World of Warcraft?

-Q- · Mar 12, 2007, 02:41 PM

Happens to me all the time, but I've chalked it up to using the logitech software that came with my keyboard/mouse (yes, I know it's crap. It seems to work, so that'll all I care about).

And yes, I play WoW. Do you know something?

Chuckit · Mar 12, 2007, 02:46 PM

Originally Posted by -Q-

Happens to me all the time, but I've chalked it up to using the logitech software that came with my keyboard/mouse (yes, I know it's crap. It seems to work, so that'll all I care about).

And yes, I play WoW. Do you know something?

World of Warcraft unbinds those keys (so you don't Exposé when you mean to Hamstring) and in previous versions would often forget to rebind them. It hasn't happened to me in a while, but the bug was always intermittent. It seems to happen more often if you switch between windowed and fullscreen modes a lot.

-Q- · Mar 12, 2007, 03:05 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

World of Warcraft unbinds those keys (so you don't Exposé when you mean to Hamstring) and in previous versions would often forget to rebind them. It hasn't happened to me in a while, but the bug was always intermittent. It seems to happen more often if you switch between windowed and fullscreen modes a lot.

Ah, thanks for the info.

Chuckit · Mar 12, 2007, 05:00 PM

If you can find a regular way to reproduce it, I'd recommend reporting the bug to the WOW Mac team. They're generally pretty responsive.

Phil333 · Mar 14, 2007, 06:43 AM

Sadly I break the WoW theory. I don't have it on this computer. I do have a Logitech mouse but I don't use their software, I use USB Overdrive for mouse preferences. And I've had this mouse for well over a year and this problem is only in the last month or so.

CaptainHaddock · Mar 14, 2007, 11:35 PM

Maybe there's more than one cause. The WoW connection makes sense to me, because both times it happened to me were around when I used to play that game.

Sijmen · Mar 16, 2007, 01:59 PM

10.3.9. Having the same problem where I can't bind 'Application Windows' what ever key I try, none of them works. When I assign F10 to 'Application Windows' and F9 to 'All Windows' F10 takes over the function of F9. No matter what I do, the function is always 'All Windows'. F11(Desktop) works no matter what.

About deleting pref files, which file should I delete? There is no Expose pref file.

Chuckit · Mar 16, 2007, 03:09 PM

Well, I will say that if it's happening to anyone in 10.3.9, I don't know what causes that. The WOW bug is specific to Tiger. But if you want to reset your Expose key bindings, delete the following file: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist. (You'll probably have to restart before it takes effect.)

foxxxy · Apr 7, 2007, 03:12 AM

I have had this problem for awhile. I run Tiger and play lots of WOW. I finally got tired of it. I'll try deleting the plist file and see if that helps. If this works I'll post back. Has anyone else tried and have any success?

Chuckit · Apr 7, 2007, 05:40 AM

Originally Posted by foxxxy

I have had this problem for awhile. I run Tiger and play lots of WOW. I finally got tired of it. I'll try deleting the plist file and see if that helps. If this works I'll post back. Has anyone else tried and have any success?

Deleting a plist won't stop the WOW bug from happening. The only way to stop it, as far as I'm aware, is to make sure WOW and OS X don't share any key combos.

Hal Itosis · Apr 8, 2007, 01:55 PM

Just to throw a monkey wrench into the works here, I too get this
seemingly random though infrequent disabling of shortcut keys,
only in my case it's usually Dashboard and Dictionary.

WoW has never existed on my HD, and the prefs I deleted were:

com.apple.systempreferences.plist
com.apple.universalaccess.plist

(According to fseventer, those are the ones that get written to).

I've just moved "com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist" to my desktop,
and will see how that goes. However... its modified date is April
2005, and this problem (for me) is only about 6 months old.

Chuckit · Apr 8, 2007, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis

Just to throw a monkey wrench into the works here, I too get this
seemingly random though infrequent disabling of shortcut keys,
only in my case it's usually Dashboard and Dictionary.

WoW has never existed on my HD, and the prefs I deleted were:

com.apple.systempreferences.plist
com.apple.universalaccess.plist

(According to fseventer, those are the ones that get written to).

I've just moved "com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist" to my desktop,
and will see how that goes. However... its modified date is April
2005, and this problem (for me) is only about 6 months old.

You're presumably running Tiger. The file I named is for Panther. In Tiger, the setting is indeed contained in com.apple.universalaccess.plist, if I recall.