The dreaded FLock key.
Wow. I haven't had much to post about lately - i've been too busy actually getting some work done. Coming soon (well, eventually....) will be a whole hunk of posts at once targetting IE and shell extensions in .net, but you'll have to wait till i get a chance. But meanwhile....
Based on what i read here on Bertrand Le Roy's blog, it seems that the FLock key on newer microsoft keyboards causes a fair bit of distress to many of us. I thought i'd post a handy link here as well as tell Bertrand for those who don't read his blog.
On these keyboards, you have your standard F1-F12 keys, but they don't send those commands by default - they send a smattering of useless commands like Help, Undo, Fwd, Spell, etc. As a developer, i need my F Keys! Also on the keyboard is a new key called F Lock, which acts much like numlock and caps lock - when the FLock key is pressed, then the F keys send the real F values.
When i first got my latest natural keyboard, i had two problems. The F keys didn't do what i wanted, and they rearranged the Home, Delete, End etc chunk of keys. I've got used to the new arrangement - in fact, i much prefer it now that i've got the hang of it (I have very fat fingers, a large delete key is a good thing :)
This FLock thing pisses me off however. It's a hardware switch, and can't be controlled from the computer, so you can't set things like 'flock on by default'.
Not long after i got the keyboard, i found this handy page, however. On it, thanks to the knowledge of Jason Tsang, you get a description of the problem, and a reg file to convert the keymappings. It modifes the scan codes so that sending with FLock switched off, it sends the F key instead of the new code.
Hope this helps some of you - it definately saves me a little bit of an annoyance each day :)
Listening to: overdrive - foo fighters - (4:32)