MacBook Pro volume keys malfunction

April 5, 2008 10:51 AM

The volume keys (f11/f12)on my macbook pro stop working, seemingly at random. When this happens, I still see the bars display in the middle of the screen, but the volume doesn't change. Anyone else get this, or have a fix?

Going to sysprefs still works, though. Restarting fixes it, but I'd like to see if there's something else I could do to fix it. It's a new intel macbook pro 15"
and other than this everything has worked wonderfully.

posted by bashos_frog to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I think this is a long shot, but the other day a few keys on the left side of my keyboard stopped working. Resetting the PMU fixed it.
posted by bluebird at 12:51 PM on April 5

The keys themselves work, the volume control display with the little boxes comes up, and the boxes increase or decrease as you hit the keys, but the volume stays the same. Also, I'm a mac noob, so what's a PMU?
posted by bashos_frog at 1:08 PM on April 5

PMU = Power Management Unit. Unless I am mistaken, your MacBook Pro doesn't have a PMU (all Intel machines have something else called the SMC, System Management Controller). Here's how to reset the SMC.

Don't know if that will actually solve the problem but it may be worth a try.
posted by kosmonaut at 2:47 PM on April 5

thanks for the info, but as a normal restart seems to solve the issue, I don't think I need to reset the SMC. I guess I'll have to dig a little deeper and see if I can identify some process that could be restarted, rather than the whole OS.
posted by bashos_frog at 3:45 PM on April 5