If you’ve got a MS keyboard then you probably have come across the annoyance where the functions keys have to be switched on using the F Lock key.

Well be annoyed no more:

The F Lock key is a hardware switch in the keyboard. Its state cannot be controlled programmatically. Its default condition is “off”. As a result, whenever the keyboard is reset, or loses power, the F Lock key will always be in an “off” state. Do note that with the Microsoft keyboards released after September 2004, the keyboard will retain F Lock status through a reboot.

For many, the way that the F Lock key operates is not desirable; some people want “normal” function key operation, some people don’t need the keys at all.

There are two ways to work around this issue. If you connect your keyboard to your computer via the PS2 port, you have two choices, you can either reprogram the scan codes using the Scan Code Mapper found in modern Windows NT-based OS (Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003) or you can reprogram the keys with the assistance of Microsoft’s Intellitype Pro software for their keyboards. If you connect your keyboard to your computer via USB port, then the only way to get around this is to reprogram the keys with the assistance of Microsoft Intellitype Pro.

While there is no way to control the F Lock key state programmatically, we can resort to some form of trickery to make the function keys act like function keys all the time, no matter what the F Lock state is.

Depending on your keyboard connection type, pick from one of the two methods to ‘fix’ this issue

http://jtsang.mvps.org/flock.html

(It’s only taken me two years to even bother googling for a fix)