Switching Off HP Action Keys

Action Keys is HP code for "let's take a standard keyboard layout and make the keys do things that people don't expect them to do". In the context of the dv6, this means that pressing F2 will cause the screen brightness to go down instead of, you know, triggering whatever command F2 is supposed to trigger normally, like Rename File. The dv6 has this enabled out of the box, and it can be very confusing. I don't know how many people actually like it, but I'm certainly not one of them, which is why I turned it off.

This is how I did it:
1) Reboot computer. Keep pressing the Escape button as the screen turns on. This will lead you to a screen with a few text options that look something like this:



I can't remember what the options are, so pick the one that leads to BIOS setup or similar.

2) Look for the option called Action Keys. It should be under either Advanced or Miscellaneous.

3) Set it to "Off" or "Disabled". If the option is called "Disable Action Keys", then obviously set it to "On" or "Enabled". The point is you want to turn Action Keys off; PMR level English will help you greatly here.

4) Go to the last screen of the BIOS menu and select "Exit and Save Changes". When prompted, choose "Yes". This will save the changes to your BIOS and reboot your computer.

And that's it: your function keys will now be accessible without pressing the Fn button, and the special functions are accessible by pressing Fn+F<whatever>. As it should be.

It may interest you to know that my hard drive (also the Samsung one) also suffered a huge slowdown out of stock whenever I tried to copy a lot of files from my external HDD to my internal HDD. Windows slowed down, everything slowed down. It was insane, but it sped back up as soon as the file copy was done. So, check these things first:

1) Are there any big files copying/downloading/torrenting? If there are, try stopping it first and see if your system speeds up.

2) Try defragging the hard drive. I use Auslogics Disk Defrag because it's bloody billions of times faster than the built-in Windows defragger. A fragmented hard drive (one where lots of files have pieces everywhere instead of being ordered in one sequential line) will always suffer slowdowns as the hard drive head will have to go everywhere instead of just following a simple line whenever it's reading or writing files.

3) Run Scandisk. Open Windows Explorer/My Computer, right click on your hard drive, Properties -> Tools, Error-checking, Check now. This will scan your hard drive for serious problems. Pray that it doesn't find any because it would mean your hard drive has serious problems that cannot be fixed.

Anyway, because I screwed up my initial setup, I ended up recovering to factory settings using the recovery disks. After redoing my setup properly, there was no huge slowdown when copying stuff. Consider doing this; it takes a long time (about 3 hours minimum to recover if you deleted the recovery partition like I did), but it seemed to fix the issue.

This post has been edited by ThisIsBoletaria: May 28 2011, 08:19 AM

Got ur dv6 oredi?

found the ram price at dell m'sia http://configure.ap.dell.com/dellstore/con...ienware-m11x-r3

Dude, Dell charges RM 249 extra to switch to 2x4GB. That's a huge margin; can we even believe that the 2x8GB price will be representative, especially considering how rare 8GB notebook RAM is?

how do u update it? which to download? i download but it says my graphic card is not the right one... can provide me wif the link?

[quote=Acid_RuleZz,May 28 2011, 04:18 AM]
Lol... you need to enter Bios and disable the "Action" key.
Yup, if your window partition running out of space it will slow down the whole system. But my fren only have 1.6GB left in his Windows partition but it didn't slow down so much like yours.


[quote=ThisIsBoletaria,May 28 2011, 07:55 AM]
Switching Off HP Action Keys

Action Keys is HP code for "let's take a standard keyboard layout and make the keys do things that people don't expect them to do". In the context of the dv6, this means that pressing F2 will cause the screen brightness to go down instead of, you know, triggering whatever command F2 is supposed to trigger normally, like Rename File. The dv6 has this enabled out of the box, and it can be very confusing. I don't know how many people actually like it, but I'm certainly not one of them, which is why I turned it off.

This is how I did it:
1) Reboot computer. Keep pressing the Escape button as the screen turns on. This will lead you to a screen with a few text options that look something like this:



I can't remember what the options are, so pick the one that leads to BIOS setup or similar.

2) Look for the option called Action Keys. It should be under either Advanced or Miscellaneous.

3) Set it to "Off" or "Disabled". If the option is called "Disable Action Keys", then obviously set it to "On" or "Enabled". The point is you want to turn Action Keys off; PMR level English will help you greatly here.

4) Go to the last screen of the BIOS menu and select "Exit and Save Changes". When prompted, choose "Yes". This will save the changes to your BIOS and reboot your computer.

And that's it: your function keys will now be accessible without pressing the Fn button, and the special functions are accessible by pressing Fn+F<whatever>. As it should be.
It may interest you to know that my hard drive (also the Samsung one) also suffered a huge slowdown out of stock whenever I tried to copy a lot of files from my external HDD to my internal HDD. Windows slowed down, everything slowed down. It was insane, but it sped back up as soon as the file copy was done. So, check these things first:

1) Are there any big files copying/downloading/torrenting? If there are, try stopping it first and see if your system speeds up.

2) Try defragging the hard drive. I use Auslogics Disk Defrag because it's bloody billions of times faster than the built-in Windows defragger. A fragmented hard drive (one where lots of files have pieces everywhere instead of being ordered in one sequential line) will always suffer slowdowns as the hard drive head will have to go everywhere instead of just following a simple line whenever it's reading or writing files.

3) Run Scandisk. Open Windows Explorer/My Computer, right click on your hard drive, Properties -> Tools, Error-checking, Check now. This will scan your hard drive for serious problems. Pray that it doesn't find any because it would mean your hard drive has serious problems that cannot be fixed.

Anyway, because I screwed up my initial setup, I ended up recovering to factory settings using the recovery disks. After redoing my setup properly, there was no huge slowdown when copying stuff. Consider doing this; it takes a long time (about 3 hours minimum to recover if you deleted the recovery partition like I did), but it seemed to fix the issue.

[/quote]


thanks for telling man

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Added on May 28, 2011, 9:25 am[quote=clfoong,May 28 2011, 07:57 AM]
Got ur dv6 oredi?

[/quote]


yea bro
nice lappy =]

This post has been edited by blue16: May 28 2011, 09:25 AM

I simply download the Catalyst Control Center [79.7 MB] from Amd website and update/install the driver.

Did you switched to the Radeon card before updating it?

Link : Catalyst Control Center 11.5

im in radeon card in default.. now downloading

6001

i click the update driver in catalyst control centre and choose the specs then it shows me this website http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/wind...ob_win7-64.aspx
i downloaded it but it says i don have the right gpu

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Added on May 28, 2011, 12:21 pmwhy i don have the option under the desktop management like the picture?
i jz have the advanced display settings option only... i have already chg to advanced view d

This post has been edited by imationyj: May 28 2011, 12:21 PM


Attached thumbnail(s)

I tried and got the same thing as you...

what the..

i'm don't know why.. already updated your windows?

do you have this installed?



check your Window Update history.

i am prefer alienware product. now i have m17x r3 with 2gb ati 6970. before this using m15x.
if you want the high end notebook especially for gaming, quality build, display and sound better take alienware. worth for your money. now have m14x r3.

how much is mx14x r3 and how much u spent for that mx17x r3?

m14x R3? Really? This is the first 14'' laptop they have produced. Get your facts straight.

The m17x r3 isn't meant for gaming, the m17x r2 is. Infact, the 15x is nearly as powerful as the 17x r3

Yes. I have that windows update installed. What does that signify?

because early on i get the same the version of your graphic adapter is not supported, but somehow after that i can install the CCC from AMD website.

you guys use the 79.7MB CCC installer right? not the 1MB.

Oh sorry.. I tried the 1MB thing. Now trying the 70+MB thingy...

This post has been edited by dingding: May 28 2011, 02:22 PM

Anyway what u guys installing is just Catalyst Control Center... not the graphic driver itself.

If there is no problem with ur current driver i suggest not to install 11.5.. ntg much changed.

I got 2 BSODs in these 2 weeks of using this laptop...
Both happened minutes after windows telling me that "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered"

Anyone faced this before? Dont know what's the cause..

So thought of maybe updating it to see if it helps..

This post has been edited by dingding: May 28 2011, 02:41 PM