Loss of Fn Keys and Hotkeys

AndrewJ · #1 30-07-2013, 11:22 AM

Gday All

W7 Pro 64bit on ASUS Mobo with I7 chippies.
Yesterday most of my keyboard hotkeys became inactive
as well as most Fn keys.
Even just booting up then opening notepad shows the key functions
are blocked, but using the mouse on the menu item works
ie its just the keyboard links that dont work.
Have been browsing the web and several other reports have come in
in the last day or so but with lots of different answers,
none of which work so far.
I have tried 2 different logins ( both admin )
I have tried 2 different keyboards ( incl delete drivers and reload )
i have run Malwarebytes and SFC /scannow and MSE and all show no probs.

Any ideas????? ( before i try a restore )

Andrew

multiweb (Marc) · #2 30-07-2013, 11:49 AM

In most laptops hotkeys are managed by a prorietary program on the laptop. If this is not running hotkeys won't work properly. Try to go to the manufacturer's website. They all have a utilities/drivers section per model to download the relevant programs. Try that first. Then a restore point second.

Barrykgerdes · #3 30-07-2013, 11:59 AM

I have not taken much notice of this yet but I have also noted that the F keys do not work on some programs at times with Win 8 and Win 8.1 (trial).

Barry

PS When I installed Win 8.1 (trial) it required during registration to enter my email address This I found was impossible to do as every time I pressed @ I got " . I tried a number of times and then had a great idea, why not enter " . This fixed the problem it printed @ and the email address was accepted and I was able to move on to the next step. When installation was complete and the computer restarted the keyboard had corrected itself.

I used to play dirty tricks like this in DOS in 1983 to confuse the users of my computer.

AndrewJ · #4 30-07-2013, 01:04 PM

Gday Marc

Its a desktop, not a laptop.
( and a bog std USB keyboard as a HID device
which has latest driver according to windoze )

I just tried Spybot on it, and it found Montera.Toolbar
so i cleaned that off ( at least it doesnt show anymore on a rescan )
but the Fn and shortcut keys are still dead.
All very confusing, exp since i have seen more than a dozen sites now that all guarantee that their fix works :-)

Andrew

multiweb (Marc) · #5 30-07-2013, 02:33 PM

Ha... have you tried a different keyboard? Sometime a registry corruption can do funny things to shortcuts and GUI. I've experienced that. Usually back tracking to a previous restore point sorts out 99% of registry issues.

AndrewJ · #6 30-07-2013, 02:53 PM

Gday Marc

Yep, tried 2 USB keyboards and get the same probs.
All very annoying.
It cant be this hard to reset the std windows shortcuts????
I know in my own apps that map the Fn keys during use
that they work, so its not mechanical,
some very basic setting in widoze has lost the data or something
elsse has grabbed it.
Spybot, MalwareBytes and the latest MSE find nothing.
edit
one thing i just found is part of this may be tied to my language bar.
I have noted it has gone missing, and no amount of changing settings
under keyboards advanced options lets me pin it to the taskbar or float
on the desktop.
SFC didnt barf whenrunning scans so i assume its still there but disabled????

Andrew

Andrew

multiweb (Marc) · #7 30-07-2013, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Marc

Yep, tried 2 USB keyboards and get the same probs.
All very annoying.
It cant be this hard to reset the std windows shortcuts????
I know in my own apps that map the Fn keys during use
that they work, so its not mechanical,
some very basic setting in widoze has lost the data or something
elsse has grabbed it.
Spybot, MalwareBytes and the latest MSE find nothing.
edit
one thing i just found is part of this may be tied to my language bar.
I have noted it has gone missing, and no amount of changing settings
under keyboards advanced options lets me pin it to the taskbar or float
on the desktop.
SFC didnt barf whenrunning scans so i assume its still there but disabled????

Andrew

Andrew

SFC will warn about corrupted OS files but not necessarily about missing files. My gut feeling is that you have some kind of registry corruption and that's unfortunately very hard to find where. Do you have a valid restore point you can access or any kind of backup?

AndrewJ · #8 30-07-2013, 03:27 PM

Gday Marc

Yep, i have restore points but was hoping not to have to use it.
It cant be this hard to do a reset

Anyway, i added a new language and got my language bar back
but no go, so restore is next option.

Andrew

AndrewJ · #9 30-07-2013, 03:54 PM

Aaaaand restore wont play.
The only logged updates in the last week were for MSE definitions.
Today ( well after the bug was there ) i loaded a driver update
for the onboard video ( autoselected by MS )
but there is no way restore will play onany settings :-(

Ahh well, red wine time.

Andrew

multiweb (Marc) · #10 30-07-2013, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Ahh well, red wine time.

On the keyboard... that will teach it some manners.

ZeroID (Brent) · #11 04-08-2013, 08:27 PM

Have you googled the issue ? Worth trying.

AndrewJ · #12 04-08-2013, 08:45 PM

Gday Brent

Yep, i Googled for three days.
You would be surprised how often it occurs
and the variety of reasons behind it.
ie registry hacks to the windows keycodes
add language bar back to desktop vs taskbar
malware keyloggers
video card drivers/control centres
and a whole range of MS KB articles.
I tried most of these with no joy.
Anyway, after three days i tried a safe boot and most of the keys still
wouldnt work so i retried the second keyboard, and this time it worked again

.
Put back the original and all keys but ctrl and most Fn are dead.
Use second board and all OK again.
I dont know what i did in those few days, but something i did must have uncorrupted something.

Andrew

Barrykgerdes · #13 05-08-2013, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Brent

Anyway, after three days i tried a safe boot and most of the keys still
wouldnt work so i retried the second keyboard, and this time it worked again

.
Put back the original and all keys but ctrl and most Fn are dead.
Use second board and all OK again.
I dont know what i did in those few days, but something i did must have uncorrupted something.

Andrew

Too much Coffee?

Barry

AndrewJ · #14 05-08-2013, 08:38 AM

Gday Barry

Its easy to laugh now,
but it wasnt then.
I just wish i knew what it was.

Andrew

multiweb (Marc) · #15 05-08-2013, 03:39 PM

Registry issues can be extremely frustrating but they are so simple to prevent. Once you have them though it's quasi impossible to go back to a working state by editing keys. There are so many access privileges, groups and inter dependencies not even mentioning the order in which services start and depend on each other. It's just a bloody mess. You can work around a few things at best but that's about it.