Keyboard layout - F10 key

Question

I have a laptop HPG62-B17sa, which has a keyboard layout in which function to get the operation of function keys from F1 to F12 , one needs to press the 'fn' key as well. Normally pressing the function keys have other functions mapped to them like brighness increase/decreas, volume increase/decrease. This gets painful while I am debugging some code using Microsoft Visual Studio wherein i need to use F10 step over, F11 step into, F5 run, etc. I need to press the 'fn' key as well while doing that, and that is cumbersome.

Is there any solution to this, such that I can by changing layout/some setting/shortcut for keyboard, the 'fn' key appears to be pressed continuously because of the setting? Then I can just use the F1 to F12 keys alone as i need.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Disabling the fn in the BIOS should do the trick. This is only possible only some HP/Compaq models. You will just have to go through the process and see if it works on your model:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c02035108

Answer 2

My Lenovo Thinkpad Edge has a similar keyboard layout and to get the normal F1-F12 behavior, I had to go into the BIOS. By default it would map the alternate behaviors to those keys, but I could switch it to map the F1-F12 behaviors to those keys and have the user press Fn+F1-F12 to control brightness, volume, etc.

I don't know if HP has a similar setting but that's where you likely would have to look.

Answer 3

For Visual Studio specifically, you can remap the hotkeys: Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard.

Type stepinto in the text box and select it from the list box (it should then say F11 (Global) in the shortcut field. Then press whatever hotkey you’d like in the shortcut field field and click Assign. (You can also optionally delete the F11 hotkey.) You can repeat the process for the other items that use hotkeys you need.