Answered F11 not working as Step Into

[robertb_NZ]

I have just set up a new laptop with the latest software including VS2017 (VS Community 2017, Version 15.8.8).

From the VS Debug Menu, Step Into (F11) and Step Over (F10) work perfectly. However while pressing F10 works as Step Over, F11 doesn't but instead toggles Airplane Mode on/off.

How do I change this so that, when I'm in VS, it works as Step Into?

Thank you, Robert.

 

[jmcilhinney]

This has nothing to do with VS. VS isn't even seeing the keystroke because it's being intercepted by the hardware and/or OS. You would need to look into your system settings.

 

[robertb_NZ]

John, this makes sense, but left me struggling to work out a strategy to fix the problem. A little more research and experimentation shows me that F10 is one of the few F-keys that hasn't an assigned function with this laptop. F2 appears to be the only other free F-key. For example F9 no longer toggles a checkpoint, but instead toggles the keyboard back-lighting. Then I found that everything worked as I wanted if the Fn key was held down, and I can lock the function key (on this keyboard with Fn-Shift, other keyboards may use Fn-Esc)

Is there an easy way of turning Fn-lock on when VS starts? If not, well at least the problem is solved well enough.

Thank you for your help.

 

[jmcilhinney]

That's the way with most laptops these days. You basically need to make a decision and stick with it: do you want to have to press the Fn key to activate hardware-specific functions or the standard function keys. The Fn key is not a standard part of Windows and would require interaction with hardware-specific drivers so you'd have to check your documentation for how to do that. I'd suggest that it's something that you need to train yourself to do but, to be frank, it's probably not something you should be changing anyway. On my Surface, I have it so that the hardware-specific functions are the default and the standard F keys require Fn to be depressed and I don't even think about it now. If you don't want things to be different on that laptop to a standard keyboard, do it the other way around.

 

[robertb_NZ]

Yes, it's a bit of an adjustment. Everything has changed: I've gone from W7 to W10, Office 2003 to Office 2019, VS2014 to 2017, SSMS 2014 to 2017, plus all the 3rd party software (MicroFocus, Camtasia, WinZip, SmartFTP so far). So things don't work the way they used to, and it can take me quite a while to sort out how to do things that I used to know exactly what was needed. I'm getting there, and mostly I like the changes once I've figured them out, but if I could have migrated my old software as I migrated my data I would have done so and upgraded as I needed to. Pressing Fn is just one such adjustment, like you I'll soon stop thinking about it.