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I have a weird problem on my 2011 MacBook Pro 15" running OS X 10.8.2.

Every now and then - say every two days - the system starts to ignore most of the keys I press for 2-3 minutes. It's like processing of keystrokes becomes incredibly slow. If I wait for ten seconds between each key, what I type is processed completely; otherwise kys wl b msng rndomly.

The system is not overloaded in any way when this happens. I'm usually writing something and this comes out of the blue.

Has anybody experienced the same, or could point me to some resources? I'm having a hard time coming up with a good Google query for this problem.

It is possible this was introduced by the 10.8 upgrade but I'm not 100% sure.

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have you tried reading the system log and finding if at that time happens something weird? and are you having that when in the Mac locally or remotely? (this happens to me remotely and sometimes when the mac is in a lot of stress). Thirdly, have you had the luck to have the activity monitor open when that happens, and see what may be causing that? Finally, has that happened to you always, or recently? (this would mean an app/launch daemon or similar could be the reason) – jackJoe Feb 9 at 11:32
I second @jackjoe's recommendation. You can access the system log files by opening the Console app. (Type Console into Spotlight). If you open it, you will see a list of messages scrolling in real time. Keep it open, and have a look at the messages from just before this happens. – daviewales Feb 9 at 13:09
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@davie neat, will do and report back if I see something, thanks! – Pekka 웃 Feb 9 at 13:56
Have you considered this to be a hardware issue? .. If you plug in an external USB keyboard, does the same issue occur at the same rate as the onboard? – adamrmcd Feb 9 at 21:31
I am having exactly this problem, at exactly the same sort of rate (every two days or so, lasting 2-3 minutes) on exactly the same machine/OS. Weird. It's definitely not a hardware problem with the keyboard, because (a) it just lasts for a few minutes, and (b) there's a delay of ~1 second between pressing a key and seeing the character appear on the screen, and it seems that any other keystrokes during that delay are lost. @Pekka웃 did you find anything from the logs? – callum Feb 15 at 13:42

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FWIW: I'm having the same problem on my late-2011 11" MacBook Air. Every now and then some of the characters on the keyboard will simply stop responding.

My current theory is that it is a problem with overheating, because it only happens when using the laptop keyboard (and never with an external keyboard) and it only happens when the laptop is actually on my lap and never when it is on a desk or table or other flat surface with adequate ventilation.

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