Re: F5--and everything went black...

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:

an assignment of func BC to key F5 (and eXeCute to
F9). And I've never heard your complaint before.

So I conclude that its YOU, or YOUR MACHINE -- maybe one too
many journeys in the overhead compartment. Refresh my memory:
that F5 "Windows screen refresh" -- was that unique to your
manufacturer, or is that a Windows-wide thing?
I just reviewed the whole thread from last June, and we
established that it was Windows-wide, but especially insistent on
HP laptops. Whether that is the result of something in HP's
hardware or some of the utilities that get loaded, will-ye,
nill-ye, on their systems, I don't think was ever resolved. Did
you ever try using an external keyboard with the system? Did the
same thing happen?
How come nobody else is affected?
Good question. I still don't use XP that much here, and of the
two boxes at the office one has that goshawful MS "Natural"
keyboard, which I find torture to type on, and the other is in a
state of terminal bitrot, so nothing that happened on it would be
(as my old philosophy prof used to say), "representative." But I
don't think I've ever had that happen.
Is it possible that
you are running a service or a program in background that
responds to the F5 key? If you take a look at the list of
running programs, even when nothing is running on the Desktop
you'll see 30 or 40 programs probably, many more on XP than on
previous operating systems (command TLIST at a DOS Prompt to
see your running Task List). A lot of those programs were
pre-installed by your manufacturer.
That sounds promising (well, of course!). Try it. also try
Process Explorer, a vast improvement on Task Manager.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx