Brian Kohrs’ Blog

For some bizarre reason, Microsoft came up with this new idea on how to better use the function keys on their keyboards. Since most users never use them, why not make them have special meanings. F2 should undo, F3 should redo, F5 should open, etc. I am sure that there is at least one user out there that actually likes this behavior, but for those of us who use the function keys all the time, it is really annoying. I can’t count the number of times that I have pressed a function key, and suddenly I am staring at an open dialog instead of my browser refreshing. Fixing it is as simple as pressing the F-Lock key, but unfortunately this setting does not survive a reboot, or even a log out.

A couple of months ago, I looked around to see if I could find a way to disable the F-Lock key, but the only thing I found was a registry file that was supposed reverse the state of the F-Lock key so that it would be off by default. Installing that registry key caused my function keys to stop working entirely, so no luck there.

Today, I googled around a bit and found a much better workaround. There is an xml configuration file that contains information about what to do when a function key is pressed, simply cleaning out that file will remove the F-Lock feature, fixing your function keys for good. One thing worth noting is that it requires at least a log out before this fix will work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 7:01 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.