This means some application (usually Quicken or CheckPoint Secure Client VPN-1) has disabled keyboard input systemwide.

You'll notice that while this happens, if you go to System Preferences > International > Input menu and enable the "Keyboard Viewer", that Keyboard Viewer no longer works.

Are you running either Quicken or CheckPoint Secure Client VPN-1?

If you're running Mac OS X 10.4.9 when this happens, can you run the following from a Terminal (from the /Applications/Utilities folder)?

ioreg -l -w 0 | grep SecureInput

You should see something like:

"IOConsoleUsers"  = (\{"kCGSSessionGroupIDKey"=20,"kCGSSessionOnConsoleKey"=Yes,"kCGSSessionIDKey"=256,"kCGSSessionUserNameKey"="admin","kCGSessionLoginDoneKey"=Yes,"kCGSessionLongUserNameKey"="admin","kCGSSessionSystemSafeBoot"=No,"kCGSSessionLoginwindowSafeLogin"=No,"kCGSSessionConsoleSetKey"=0,"kCGSSessionUserIDKey"=501,"kCGSSessionSecureInputPID"=311})  "IOConsoleUsersSeed" = <14000000>

Let me know what you see for the "kCGSSessionSecureInputPID" value.  Can you note down the number, then run:

ps auxwww | grep 311

(where 311 is that number)

so we can see what application has enabled secure input?

Thanks!

No problem.  I've written to Checkpoint, and they said they would release a fixed version of the client.

Are there plans to have the keyboard operate without having to disable Quicken Scheduler or the other programs?

I have the same problem, but only if I have Parallels and VMWARE open at the same time.  I have two servers running and it would beep when I tried to input anything except the command button.

Just to let folks know, we are painfully aware of this issue, and we're sorry for the inconvenience.  The problem is that any program, like Checkpoint, Quicken, etc. can disable raw keyboard input system-wide—not just to VMware Fusion, but also to any game or accessibility application that needs to read the keyboard directly.

We've spent several months trying to get Apple to provide us a workaround; they wrote a Technical Note that we've been sending to the application vendors telling them how to use the keyboard disabling API correctly:

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2007/tn2150.html

We proposed a new API to be included in Mac OS X 10.5, but that didn't happen.

It's going to take some serious rearchitecting of our keyboard support to no work around this issue, and unfortunately that didn't happen in time for VMware Fusion 1.1.

Hi chillyjim. Is this fix also available for the pre-release SecureClient for Leopard, or is it just for 10.4?  I just got the pre-relase and am running Leopard.  As you suggested, switching to Unity resolves the issue, but I prefer to work in full screen mode.

Thanks for the info.  I think I can get by until then.  Take care.

p.s. I also noted the EA version burns quite a bit of CPU.

Best regards,

Charles E. Johnson

Information Systems Manager, Schenker Inc.

telephone: 516.403.5405