Visual Studio hot keys change occasionally, specifically F6 vs Ctrl-Shift-B for building. WHY?

Question

I always press F6 to build my project. Suddenly some of my Visual Studio instances are wanting me to use Ctrl-Shift-B. It's not keyboard related - the actual text of the menu option changes from "F6" to "Ctrl-Shift-B".

Any answers as to how to fix, and what causes this?

Answer 1

Your keyboard scheme has changed - go to Tools/Options/Environment/Keyboard and set the default keyboard scheme to 'Visual C# 2005'

Answer 2

Keyboard mapping corruption issue perhaps? Check Tools / Options, Environment / Keyboard. Should see a drop-down for your Keyboard mapping scheme and next to it a Reset button. Hit the reset button.

I'm not responsible for this screwing with your settings - save them prior to doing this just in case you screw the pooch.

Oh, in case the narcs out there care, I think this is a valid question and would be put out if someone voted to close it. Of course now that I've said that, its a certaintity, isn't it?

Answer 3

Its because you installed VMWare. It remaps that key so that F6 can be used to start debugging on a virtual machine.

Annoyed me too.

Answer 4

I am having issues with keys not working. I am using a laptop with a second full sized keyboard. Everything works fine till I start the VS2008 debugger inside of a VMWare VM running Windows 7. Then the keys such as and which are used for stepping through the code do not work on the full-sized keyboard but do work on the laptop keyboard.

I just started looking into this. I'll post it if I find a solution somewhere.

Len

Answer 5

If you have other key bindings and dont want to reset the lot use: Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard

Then find Build.BuildSolution or Build.RebuildSolution (on your preference) select "Global" in the "Use shortcut in" dropdown, place the cursor in "Press Shortcut Key" and slap F6. It'll show you what it is currently assigned to, for me is was to traverse split panes (maybe it overrides f6 when you use split panes for the first time? I've always wondered why my home development machine built with f6 and my work one dosn't and come to think of it I've never used split panes at home) then hit Assign.

Answer 6

Yep, it happend to me also because i've installed VMWare.