I really believe that HP is one of the best brands in computer industry with its great products. In fact, I’m currently using a HP G62 laptop and I’m really satisfied but one of the things that made me sad about it was the function keys.

As you know, I’m a software developer and using Visual Studio IDE. One of the most important shortcut keys in Visual Studio is F5 that complies and runs the application you’re developing. Since the function keys in HP laptops (some of models) are disabled by default, you have to hold the “fn” key and then press F5 in order to compile your application and it will bother you, I swear!

So in this post, I’m going to show you how you can disable the action keys and get back to the old-style keyboard.

There are lots of solutions over the web. Here’s an example from eHow.com:

1. Press the "Fn" and "Num Lk" keys on the keyboard simultaneously. The "Number Lock" indicator light should turn off, indicating that the letter keys will once again type letters when pressed. This combination should work on the majority of recent HP laptops. If it does not, try one of the alternate key combinations in this article's remaining steps.

2. Press the "Fn" and "F11" keys simultaneously, then attempt to type a letter. If the combination does not work, continue to the next step.

3. Press the "Fn" and "Scroll Lock" keys simultaneously, then attempt to type a letter. Continue to the next step if this does not work.

4. Press the "Fn," "Scroll Lock" and "F11" keys simultaneously.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/how_5997115_unlock-function-keys-hp-laptop.html

Unfortunately, this works only in few models of HP laptops not all of them!

The Solution

• All you have to do is to go to your machine’s BIOS configuration by pressing F10 on system startup.
• In the configuration page, navigate to System Configuration tab
• And finally disable the [Action Key Mode]
• You’re done!

Now you don’t need to hold “Fn” key when want to press F keys. but if you want to let’s say turn your volume up, you need to hold the “Fn” key.

Hope it helps.