DaniWeb IT Discussion Community - Sony Vaio Fn key problem

:)

Ooh, you're all very silly. You silly, silly people.

Just kidding. It just so happens that I have the knowledge you desire. So here we go, kids.

THE NOT-SO-OFFICIAL OVERLY LONG POST ON GETTING YOUR KEYBOARD TO WORK ON A SONY VAIO LAPTOP.

To begin with, on more recent sony laptops (such as the VGN FS line), the service is called 'hkcmd' or something to that effect. So if you are using a sony-made computer, and your hotkeys (like 'Fn' or the 'S1' and 'S2' keys) are working, and you go into the 'Processes' section of the Windows task manager, and you see 'hkserv' or 'hksrv' or 'hkcmd' or any of those in uppercase, it means your hot keys are functioning well and good and fine and everything will be okay, and you can sit back and enjoy a chocolate milkshake at your kitchen table while sifting through your mail or reading the newspaper and everything will be alright.

But there can be problems. Yes indeed. And if you are having problems, read on.

There are two kinds of problems which crop up on Sony Vaio Laptops, one where your computer's hotkeys simply aren't working. Another, which I discovered while visiting a friend's house, is that they have the tendency to make it so occasionally when you type some letters, they come out like numbers, or numbers come out the wrong way, and all that such. Both of these problems are covered in this post.

POSSIBLE PROBLEM #1- I'm using a Sony Computer, and for some reason, my hot keys aren't working, or I don't have the driver for them installed. How do I fix that? (A driver is the software necessary for your computer to be able to 'understand' or 'communicate' with the hardware attached to it.)

LONG, LONG, ANSWER.
If at any point in this answer, you feel that you can 'take it from here' than by all means do so. A lot of this guide is just walking through the process step-by-step and explaining stuff along the way.

You can get the driver for making your hotkeys work by going to
http://esupport.sony.com/perl/select...=24&NAVDISP=pc and entering in your model number, so you can access sony driver downloads, user guides, Frequently asked questions, technical specs, product alerts, and other stuff about your laptop.

Most of you people already seem to have cleverly decided to figure out your series and model number before asking for help, so you probably won't need to download the 'detect my model' thing, and you can skip the rest of this paragraph. If you don't know your model number, you can find it out by downloading their program, or, if you still have your 'vaio control center' on your computer (which is, don't worry, a helpful thing), you can just go to that. Now I'm not sure how older versions of this were designed, but in mine, you can just click the 'system information' category, and click the little gear icon with 'system information' next to it. And under 'Product information' and 'Model' will be your series and model. Select that on the esupport.sony.com website using their dropdown menus or such.

Anyway, to get the sony-specific drivers for your computer, or for your hotkeys in general, click the 'Drivers/Software' tab on their page. From there you can get the drivers which came with your computer, drivers which are updates for the ones you already had, or get all the drivers ever for that computer in one 'everything' list page.

Windows can typically use your laptop fine without your manufacturers drivers on it, but it greatly helps to have the actual drivers and hardware management programs which came with the computer, as that usually allows you much greater control and ease-of-use when it comes to using your computer, and much less bugs and errors. So if you erased your computer and reinstalled windows or something, or if you updated to XP from an earlier version (such as with the PCG-FX case listed in this thread) now would be a good opportunity to download all of the drivers. Sony will have a guide on doing that, and plaease do so.

Specifically, if your computer came with something earlier than windows xp, Sony will have a specific page on there for drivers for people who upgraded to windows xp. Sony will have a guide to help you along with this, I don't need to tell you about it, the instructions exist, follow them as if they were the bible, the Qu'ran, and the sacred scrolls of Boshmop the great all put together. In other words, if you updated to, or reinstalled windows, stop reading this post, go to Sony's page for downloading drivers for your computer, and read sony's instructions for 'Windows XP Clean Install' and listen to them.

If you've gotten to this point, it means that:
-You are still using your computer with the Operating System it came with. You did not update to windows, nor did you reformat your computer and reinstall windows via a Windows XP install disk. You're using the computer the way it came.
-Yet for some your hotkeys are NOT working.
If either of these are not true, reread the above half of this post, because you must have missed something.

Anyway, here's how to get the driver for your hotkeys: Now, remember, if you upgraded to windows xp, go to the 'OS migration' page, if not, go to the 'everything' page, and find the ORIGINAL driver that came with the computer for hotkeys, and then the UPDATED version if there is one. The drivers will normally not be specifically called 'Sony Hotkeys' but rather, they will be under a more general, wider-ranging driver, such as 'Sony Shared Library'. If there is a 'Notebook Control Device Driver', than get that instead, because we are assuming that you already have the sony shared library, because we are assuming you did not install windows from scratch or pointlessly delete a bunch of your files. If you are pretty sure that for one of these reasons you do not have the sony shared library, get that first and install that first, and then install any 'Notebook Control' drivers.

After you're done with all of this, restart your computer (if you haven't already) and try your hotkeys out.

Alright??? Are we good? Are we good? We're good? Good!

POSSIBLE PROBLEM #2- I'm using the normal keyboard that's part of my laptop, but whenever I try to type on the right side of my keyboard, (or sometimes) the letter that should come out on the screen (such as 'm') is not there, and instead there's something different! (Like 0 for 'm', or 2 for 'k', or 3 for 'j') I've tried installing new drivers and other stuff, and it's still not working! WHAT'S GOING ON???

ANSWER!
Here's yer problem, buddy. Your computer thinks you have the 'Fn' key (otherwise known as the function key) held down right now, even though you don't! You can tell that this is the problem if the letters/numbers which come out on the screen are the ones which are noted on the lower part of the keys you're pressing. And you'll notice that if you actually hold down the 'Fn' key, your computer's keyboard acts as it normally does.

So why does the computer think the 'Fn' key is being held down, even when it's not? Because you have 'Num Lock' on! When you have the 'Num Lock' key on, your computer perpetually thinks that the Fn key is held down.

Here's how to turn 'Num Lk' off if you want your keyboard acting normal again: hold 'Fn' and hit the 'Num Lk' button. (You have to hold Fn while doing this, because otherwise, the computer would think you were trying to press 'Scr Lk', or scroll lock. I don't know the layout of every keyboard of every computer sony has ever made, so it might be different for you.), after that, everything should work normal again. For some reason, Sony Vaio laptops, on the rare occasion turn their 'num lock' on by themselves. It's easy as it can be to turn it back off, it's just that it can be very confusing for someone who doesn't understand the problem.

Alright! We all good? Thanks. Awesome. I gotta fly.

*Vartotojas jumps into a small electric-blue-colored skycar. He flips the top over his head and onto the front, and presses the big green 'AGOGO!' button in the center of the dashboard, which then results in a large "ding dong!" sound. His ship lifts up for a second, hovers, and then vanishes into the endless intracacies of time and space. Left behind is but a vapor trail of light-gray fog, which soon dissapates.*