keyboard mystery keys

John Player

hey all ,

been using computer for years now but never ever knew what the following keys do on the keyboard, can anyone please fill me in.

1. Sys Rq (its another option on the Print Screen Button)
2. Scroll Lock
3. Instert
4. Pause/Break


all these keys are just above the arrow keys on the board.


thanks
luke

Creamy Goodness

well scroll lock has something to do with page u/down i think

Webmonkey

Insert, is where u go back on something u've typed and if pressed it will overwrite the next charactor...

Pause/Break.....umm this was used in dos programs i believe....press that key when u start ur pc, say in the bios and the computer pauses

Giblet

http://www.daryllang.com/scroll/scroloff.htm





Scroll Lock used to stop DOS text flying by the screen when you used something like the "type" command in DOS.

Pause/Break does roughly the same thing, but is used as you need it rather than automatic.

Insert allows you to insert the active cursor in a piece of text. It basically treats everything after it like white space, writing over the old text.

SysRq is an old command which used to recover the system if a program crashed. It's used in Linux now for similar things, If compiled properly.

Mick L

btw, the Windows key and Pause Break opens up Device Manager.

SantaHoe

Originally posted by Mick L
btw, the Windows key and Pause Break opens up Device Manager.

Nice hotkey!
Although on XP it opens system properties, still very usefull.

You probably already know this but "SysRq/Print Screen" also functions as a screen capture in Windows... basically copies the screen contents to the clipboard... never ceases to amaze me how many people don't know about it and end up using screen capture utils for very basic things.

As has already been said, Insert toggles between Insert and Over-type modes... put the cursor at the start of an existing line of text and watch how it effects typing.
Shift & Insert is also used as a hotkey for paste.

Pause/Break can be used to terminate a batch file (CTRL + BREAK)... slap this in a .bat file if you want to test it out.

@echo off
:loopme
echo Press BREAK!!!
goto loopme

Anyone else think they should have replaced the "Context Menu" key with a "CTRL+ALT+DEL" key? hmmm

Capt'n Midnight

In Dos you should use BREAK ON in batch files
otherwise you have to wait until the command writes to the screen before it checks for keystrokes. Also Crtl-S and Crtl-P pause and start scrolling eg: type bigfile.txt Ctrl-C also breaks... Ctrl Q is usually Quit in many Dos / Linux Apps

It's all part of M$'s extend and embrace culture - you have keys that seem to do nothing because SW writers use new keys for the same old jobs - and just cause confusion - eg: the ALT key and the Windows Key and the Menu Key were hardly used by older programs... and all the F keys apart for F1 for help aren't worth remembering - F3 does not always search nor F5 doesn't always refresh in M$ Office apps

same sort of inattention to details results in the button that means "press this key to continue" being called - Next , Ok , Continue , Finish , Ready etc. etc.

Which non-windows program is this ?
F1 - Help
F2 - Save
F3 - Save As
F10 - Quit

A. - Most of them...