Tim's Tech Tips

This was a tricky little problem that came down to a sort-of-hardware-issue. This guy was hitting “F5” to refresh the page in his web browser, but it wasn’t working. Here’s what happened
The problem:

When the user hits F5, they get a box like this one:

The standard Windows “Open File” dialog.

Click "Read more" for the solution!

The solution:

I was sure, at first, that F5 was the open file shortcut for some weird program he must have had selected, so I had him triple verify that the actual Firefox window was selected. When that didn’t remedy the problem, I decided to test the problem out myself, using remote administration. With his permission, I logged into his computer… but I was unable to reproduce the problem.
At this point, I was fairly sure he was the one doing something wrong, so while I watched his screen, I had him hit F5 one more time – it opened the same weird window! After some deep thought, I realized the only thing it could be, at least that I could think of, is that his keyboard has some weird setting on it to make it so F5 opens that particular window. My keyboard doesn’t have whatever feature that is enabled, so when I did it over remote administration it sent the standard “F5” key. I happen to have a Microsoft multimedia keyboard so I looked around, and sure enough, the secondary “function” for the F5 key is “OPEN”! I had him turn on the function lock key, and he was good to go. Everything worked just right.
The fella was so nice, he offered to pay us $50 just for fixing that little problem, but we of course declined. We appreciate the sentiment, but this is a free service and will remain that way. :-)