SOLVED: HP Pavillion g6 laptop - F1 key won't activate EL console, gives Windows help instead.

[tork_unib]

So I bought a new laptop with Win8. Installed EL, and very happy to have a laptop that runs the client without using poorman.

 

Less happy to find that every time I press the F1 key to get to the console, I get the inbuilt Windows Help & Support page instead. The profuse amount of swearing kind of 'less happy'.

 

After a bit of googling, it turns out that HP (and possibly other manufacturers) now include a BIOS 'feature' known as Action Keys Mode which overrides the default action for the function keys, requiring you to use a combination of the Fn key and the function key, to get the intended result. In this case, Fn+F1 for the console.

 

So, if you are like me, and don't fancy re-writing 6-odd years of muscle-memory, you'll need to change a setting in the BIOS.

 

For me, this was found under System Configuration -> Action Keys Mode

 

Set it to DISABLED, and normality should ensue.

[DibClark]

have you tried using the tilde "~" key instead?

[tork_unib]

Didn't try that, as I've already overcome the issue, but I'll bear it in mind if I encounter an unforseen issue that requires me to reinstate action keys. Thanks.

[DibClark]

 

good tip tho

[SolarStar]

I have a HP ProBook 4535s with Windows 7 on it. I know HP installs some software on the computer...

However I don't have this problem since I reformated my harddrive. Does your computer have EFI ?

 

There are some services that you might also run on your computer, I found:

• HP Software Framework Service
  
• HP Connection Manager Service
  
• HP Service
  
• HP Quick Synchronization Service
  
• hpHotkey Monitor
  

you can try to deactivate them or set status to manual start.

 

Do you also get HP System Information with Windows-Key + F2 ?

[tork_unib]

If you were having this issue, and a reinstallation fixed it, I'd have to guess that it was indeed a HP service, the hotkey monitor would have been the first thing I'd have killed.

 

The system has UEFI and SecureBoot enabled, again not related to the issue I was describing, but don't worry - I've yet to try to get this yoke to dual-boot Linux, so there's likely some fun to be had in that department still to come

 

My problem was basically that the laptop ships in a configuration where pressing the function key gives you the result that you'd normally get when using the Fn and the Function key, and vice versa. If I pressed F2 for example, it would dim the screen, wheras if I pressed Fn-F2 in the EL client, it would launch a link in the web-browser.

 

To make it clearer, basically imagine typing 1234 on the keyboard was giving you !"£$, and I needed to hold shift to get the numbers. Maddening, but fixed in the BIOS, or UEFI, or whatever it's meant to be called these days.

 

tl;dr:

 

IT WAS FIXED WHEN I POSTED, I JUST WANTED TO DOCUMENT IT IN CASE ANYONE ELSE ENCOUNTERED THE SAME ISSUE