Why is my keyboard acting like the Ctrl key is pressed when I hit an F key?

Posted by Dan Tao on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Dan Tao
Published on 2011-01-05T18:31:11Z Indexed on 2011/01/05 18:56 UTC
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Windows

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keyboard

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ctrl

So, I'm gradually getting the hang of the Kinesis Advantage Pro keyboard that my wife bought me for Christmas. I love it so far. But something very strange happened today. (Note: I actually have no idea if this problem has anything to do with the Kinesis keyboard per se. All I know is that I never encountered this problem until after replacing my old keyboard with the Kinesis.)

It seems that if I press an F key (e.g., F2), the computer starts acting like I'm holding down the Ctrl key. For example if I click on a link in my web browser, it now opens in a new tab. Or if I hit A all the text in the document I'm editing gets selected. This behavior persists until I manually hit the Ctrl key again.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? What could cause such behavior?

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