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Recently I purchased the Lenovo S230u “Ultrabook” which is a Windows 8 laptop/tablet device. The screen can swivel and fold over, literally transforming itself into a Surface tablet. In my case make that Surface Pro – as I replaced the EOM “tweaked” version of Windows 8 with a fresh 64 bit install of Windows 8 Pro.

Whilst gleefully using my device I discovered that I really didn’t want have to press the red Fn key every bloody time I need to use one of the function keys (F1-F12), which is the default out-of-the-box behaviour.

Messing about in the Thinkpad Setup (BIOS) menu, I discovered the answer to the problem. Oddly enough the hardest problem I encountered was figuring out how to access this menu in the first place. It turns out shutting down the machine and turning it back on will not present an opportunity, the only reliable way I found after reboot to see the “To interrupt normal startup, press Enter” caption was to restart.

After you click restart, and the machine starts to reboot, keep your finger poised over the Enter key, because you will only have a window of 1 or 2 seconds before the caption disappears. Once the Thinkpad Setup menu appears, navigate to the Config menu and set the Change to “F1-F12 keys” value to Legacy.

Finally because the setting doesn’t take effect until after you save you will need to press Fn F10 one last time to save and exit.

Happy keyboarding!