[Vasilis]

Dear all,

Suddenly, the above three keyboards stopped working. I noticed that the tab keyboard was not working last Friday, and today, I noticed that there other two also are not functioning. If I remember correctly last Thursday (or maybe Friday) the system installed a few updates. Could this update be the reason for this problem?
Also, the problem with these three buttons is present when I run in safe boot or even when I logged in as a guest

Thank you in advanced

[P]

Most likely there is a short somewhere along the column that controls those three keys. Haev you spilled something into the keyboard, perhaps?

[Vasilis]

I thought of that, but then again the eject button is far away from the other two buttons. I am not that clumsy to spil something all over the keyboard.

I believe that it has to do with the update. Is it possible to reinstall the keyboard drivers?

[P]

Not without reinstalling the entire OS. First step in troubleshooting is to use the Keyboard viewer:

OS X Mavericks: Use the Keyboard Viewer

That can show which keys are detected as down.

[Vasilis]

I did use the keyboard viewer, and it showed that the caps lock, and tab are both "dead"

Also removed the key, and tried to clean the surface underneath it, but, again, nothing

[ghporter]

It sounds a lot like you have a dying keyboard.

[Vasilis]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

It sounds a lot like you have a dying keyboard.

Is it possible to test it? Because it was working fine and one day it stopped

[ghporter]

Testing the keyboard is as simple as swapping it out for a different one - or swapping your problem keyboard to another machine.

Keyboards are simple and cheap. I would expect that the fix for this would be a new keyboard.

[turtle777]

You should be happy that two mostly useless keys died.

Sooner or later, you'll need a new keyboard, because other keys will follow.

-t

[Vasilis]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

You should be happy that two mostly useless keys died.

Sooner or later, you'll need a new keyboard, because other keys will follow.

-t

useless?? Aparently you do not use the Terminal nor you are a developer I am talking about the tab key not the caps lock

Anyhow, you are both right.... I need to buy a new keyboard.

[Vasilis]

I used a keymapper to map a key combination to tab

One thing that I noticed, however, is that when I mapped esc to caps lock, the caps lock light did turn on when I hit the esc button. Is this a good sign about the keyboard or is something irrelevant?

[donaldkepler]

Moreover, you can disconnect and reconnect your keyboard. Try to connect your keyboard to a different USB port.
After reading this esc and caps key combination, it can be felt that there may be any hardware issue behind it. Because, any keyboard key might have left in pressed form for a long time without hitting it later.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Vasilis 

useless?? Aparently you do not use the Terminal nor you are a developer I am talking about the tab key not the caps lock

Anyhow, you are both right.... I need to buy a new keyboard.

You are right, I'm not a programmer.

But I do use the Terminal, although never needed the Tab key.
What does it do ?

-t

[P]

Autocomplete in the shell. Start typing a command and then the beginning of a file name and hit tab, and it will fill in as far as it can out of the file names in that directory.

[turtle777]

Ah, yes, right, now I remember that functionality.
I can see how that's a hazzle if you don't have a tab key.

-t

[Vasilis]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Ah, yes, right, now I remember that functionality.
I can see how that's a hazzle if you don't have a tab key.

-t

In the shell, the tab key is extremely handy when you have folders/files with space in their name, because it will add the right number of spaces along with the backslash. I am too lazy to remember how to correctly type the name of those folders, and the tab key is the best solution.