keyboardmacos
A kid tampered with System Preferences on my Mac Air running Lion, and now, none of the top-row keyboard buttons work. For instance, altering screen brightness, toggling the dashboard, and altering volume don't work.
There does seem to be some mismatch though. For instance, pressing the eject button now takes me to the dashboard.
How can I restore the default functionalities of the top-row keyboard buttons?
I assume you mean the key combinations traditionally used to generate extended characters like bullets, umlats, and so on. There are several places to check.
Check System Preferences : Language & Text : Input Sources to make sure you are using the correct keyboard mapping (for example, "U.S."):
It can be very easy to switch your keyboard layout by accident, so you may want to be sure only one layout is checked.
If that does not help, look in System Preferences : Keyboard : Keyboard Shortcuts and see if there are any shortcuts assigned to the combinations you are trying to use:
Before you do any of the steps mentioned below the line-break, check the bootcamp control panel first!!!
When in Windows, after everything is installed and done, do the following:
Your keyboard and trackpad should work (almost) perfectly. If not, read the answer that follows.
When you installed Windows the specific bootcamp drivers should have been installed automatically from your Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) DVD or 10.7 (Lion) DMG in the process. I would recommend trying to:
The correct bootcamp drivers should then be installed automatically from the OSX DVD. If the drivers were not installed, browse for them on the OSX DVD.
If all else fails you can always try re-installing Windows, and from there should be able to determine during the process if you have keyboard functionality.
★ The key to having the correct drivers working in bootcamp is installing them specifically from the OSX DVD or DMG.
The Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 Boot Camp Software includes these Mac drivers for Windows:
Apple Bluetooth
Apple Keyboard Support
Apple Remote Driver
Apple Trackpad
Atheros 802.11 Wireless
ATI Graphics
Boot Camp control panel for Microsoft Windows
Boot Camp System Task Notification item (System Tray)
Broadcom Wireless
Intel Chipset Software
Intel Integrated Graphics
iSight Camera
Marvel Yukon Ethernet
nVidia Graphics
Cirrus Logic Audio
Realtek Audio
SigmaTel Audio
Startup Disk control panel for Microsoft Windows
Best Answer
If you check the Keyboard pane in System Preferences, you should see an option called
Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys. I think you'll find it checked. The default is to have it unchecked.Then within the Mission Control pane in System Preferences, I think you'll find that "Show Dashboard" is set to F13. The default is F12 (note that the default doesn't work if
Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keysisn't checked).