ctrl and alt buttons acting as FN button

[Cue]

I have a very odd problem with a Dell Inspiron 1545 with windows vista home basic.

The shift, CTRL, ALT, Alt Gr and Ctrl all work as the FN button, but the real FN button is inactive and does nothing.
This is a 3 week old computer.

I have updated the BIOS but not much else as nothing comes to mind to try.

Anyone come across this?

 

[NYJimbo]

I have a very odd problem with a Dell Inspiron 1545 with windows vista home basic.

The shift, CTRL, ALT, Alt Gr and Ctrl all work as the FN button, but the real FN button is inactive and does nothing.
This is a 3 week old computer.

I have updated the BIOS but not much else as nothing comes to mind to try.

Anyone come across this?

Start a trouble ticket with dell on behalf of the customer. Its likely they will want the unit shipped back.

 

[Cue]

I just got another model like this with the same problem.
But this time I figured it out.

It seems that Dell have changed the way these keys usually work.
Now the FN button turns on the F1, F2.... buttons but not like usually turning on the controls also assigned to those buttons.
Now the controls are just active all the time (I have to press FN+Alt+F4 to close an app).

There is color coding there to indicate this behavior, my mind just simply refused to grasp it, as its looks and feels so stupid.

Anyone know if this is a new "trend" from Dell?