Chosen Solution
Hi I have an MacBook Pro late 2011 that has served perfectly until now. The keys from S to L (mainly second row of the keyboard) stopped working. They are lagging or not responding at all. The problem can be absent but then reappears. External bluetooth keyboard works ok. I have refreshed memories and done all the routine tasks. What might cause this? Loose cables, dirt, liquide etc.? How to test different options and diagnose? Hardware test didn’t find anything. Thanks a million for anyone who can help me! Juha Update (07/28/2020) I haven’t yet received the new battery but in the meantime I have recognised that when starting again after longer time eg. over night I wait for couple of minutes and the keys are sort of warming up and after few minutes they work quite ok at least for a while. Still something related to the battery? Update (07/28/2020) Hello I have changed the battery now and unfortunately that didn’t solve the issue. So, next step will obviously be replacement of the whole keyboard, which is not an easy task and I have to rely on service (expensive in relation to the age) or consider to buy a new Mac. Sad to conclude this.
@fixer66 - Again your symptoms are telling me to remove the more obvious problem first! The swollen battery is the easy fix. Otherwise, you’er left with the bigger issue of the keyboard getting liquid damaged. Mostly, I find people confess they had a sizable spill and more than one row of keys are effected and its not sporadic. The S to L keys are using the same row line but there are a few more keys in the row A as well as ; as well as ’ that would also be effected. Think of it like a spreadsheet where you lost a full row of information not just a few cells across or down a column. Instead of arguing, how about diagnosing the source of the problem?
Hi, even i have the same model of the MacBook Pro, and this keyboard damage might be because of water, or internal defects, try replacing the keyboard
In my experience, the swollen battery affects the trackpad click first, and I’ve not personally known it affect a keyboard, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t. At least you can easily get these macbooks apart to check stuff, though, unlike the later ones. Trivial enough to remove the bottom, and you can generally see if the battery is swollen - to actually remove the battery you need a tri-lobe screwdriver and a healthy disregard for Apple’s “do not remove” sticker. These ones aren’t glued in so you’d have to be pretty careless to do any damage or risk a fire or anything. I can’t remember offhand what you have to remove to get at the keyboard ribbon connector, but disconnecting and reconnecting it might fix it - one or other line out on that would affect a whole row of keys. Most likely, though, is water. These keyboards are super-sensitive to water ingress, and that tends to take out entire groups of keys at a time. It seems nigh on impossible to revive a keyboard that’s had water get in, and, while replacement keyboards are available on ebay etc., there’s a reason Apple don’t bother and just replace the whole top cover. There’s an iFixit guide. You need to remove the motherboard, peel off the adhesive keyboard backlight assembly, then undo about sixty little screws. It takes a while. I had to do this on a 17" 2011 MBP, but for ages I just used a separate bluetooth keyboard instead. The water that had got into it was the tiniest splash, the sort of thing that could easily happen without you even noticing - e.g. someone slopping a small amount of water from a glass in a cafe while you were looking the other way or something. It’ll work fine for a few minutes, then start getting intermittent, then get steadily worse as the water works its way into the layers of the keyboard.
