Strange "fn" and "fn lock" behaviour

I have new FW 13 AMD, with 3.03 BIOS.

I am having weird “fn” key problem. In normal mode, the top keyboard row functions like media keys. When I press them in combination with “fn” I get the function keys. I.e. “fn+F6” gets me “F6”. So far, so very good.

But… When I press “fn+ESC”, the expected behaviour is that the media and function keys would swap, i.e. key alone would give me function key, and “fn+F8” would give me media function, i.e. “Brighness Up”. But this is NOT what I am getting. After pressing “fn+ESC”, the keyboard gets into weird “always media keys” mode. E.g. when I press F8 and “fn+F8” I always get “Brightness Up”. In this mode I cannot press function keys at all. Pressing “fn+ESC” would bring me back into normal mode.

In short, I have no way to setup to have function keys by default.

The behaviour is the same in Linux and Windows.

Is anyone else getting this behaviour? Any suggestions? Solutions? It looks like BIOS issue.

Indeed odd. On mine, the top row works as function keys by default, not media keys … possibly because fn still works to switch behavior with fn-lock for me (after using fn-lock, the fn key still works to get opposite behavior) and fn-lock is probably remembered across reboots.

I have the FW 13 AMD since October, updated to firmware 3.03 (and recent 3.03b which only updates the EC to fix USB-C charging and some other “DPC” thing). I run linux, in case that makes a difference …

I don’t know if this will solve your problem or not, but I know the EC can get confused and sometimes needs to be rebooted, and I suspect the EC is involved in keyboard processing. So this might help.

Power down the computer, unplug the computer (no USB power at all), and wait for 2-3 minutes. Then power it back up. That will reset the EC, and might help with the keyboard.

This EC-mediated keyboard issue has only been observed on the Intel models :smile:

1 Like