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OldCorpse

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 7, 2005
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I have a stock M1 MBP 8GB/256GB, with only default apps installed (I didn’t install any other apps), on the latest Big Sur.

Today, when I woke it up and it asked for my password, the strangest thing happened: I barely managed to put in the first character, when suddenly it “took over” and a string of characters appeared (the dots) one after the other like a train, without my inputting anything, and it took up the whole box, and I assume kept going. It felt exactly as if a key was stuck - but I nothing was pressed, and I looked very carefully over the keyboard and didn’t see anything stuck anywhere. Of course, when I hit “return”, it shook, indicating wrong password. I tried several times, and the same thing kept happening. So I restarted it from the power button, but when the screen presented itself, the same thing kept happening.

When the screen with the password box appeared again, it had the buttons for “shut down” and “restart” and I hit “shut down”, but it restarted instead. I did this several times and it kept re-starting as if I was pressing the “restart” dialogue. Strange.

Anyhow, I kept fooling around and somehow one time it allowed me to input the password normally, and I finally managed to get in.

Naturally, I searched online for the problem with DuckDuckGo, and in fact found the exact description of the problem I had, but when I clicked on the link, it discussed a different problem… so the link and the description didn’t match at all.

Regardless, I thought perhaps it’s a OS issue, so I decided to update to Monterey 12.1 (from Big Sur). When it asked me for my password to update the OS, again the problem occurred with the “stuck key” effect, but after a couple of tries, it allowed me to input my password normally.

So I updated to MacOS 12.1 and when the password box presented itself, I had no problem inputting my password normally.

I hope that’s the end of the problem, but in the link description I found with DuckDuckGo, the guy complaining about the problem said it doesn’t happen every time but happens frequently, so we’ll see if it carries over to 12.1.

Anyhow, anyone else see this bug? TIA!
 

mr_roboto

macrumors 6502a
Sep 30, 2020
856
1,866
Do you, by any chance, have a paired bluetooth keyboard sitting somewhere nearby and a pet cat who might decide to get up on your desk and sit on said keyboard? I had something like this happen today. After being very puzzled for a while, I eventually realized this was a possible explanation. The keyboard's in another room, but when I checked, sure enough, the MBP stays connected to it in here. Furthermore, the kitties only jump up on that table when I'm not in the same room, and I didn't go in there at all while this was happening. So it all fits. Now I just gotta have it happen again so I can check whether that's actually the reason.
 

OldCorpse

macrumors 68000
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Dec 7, 2005
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I do have a cat, but no bt keyboard. The only bt paired thing I have is a sound bar, which was off when I attempted to log in, and the cat was not anywhere near the MBP.

I wonder if it’s a Big Sur bug, or a Big Sur on M1 Macs bug, or what. I’ll see if this happens again on 12.1
 

OldCorpse

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 7, 2005
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Sadly this bug is still present in 12.1. I might take my MBP to the Apple store, but who knows with the pandemic and all.
 
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