Solved Sleep keyboard shortcut suddenly stopped working

cbreemer · Jan 18, 2024

Ever since I bought my PC with Windows 11, the Fn-F12 keyboard combination would put the computer to sleep. I was happy with that. But since a week or so, that suddenly does not work anymore, and I have no idea why. I've not changed anything. This is quite annoying as it now requires 3 mouse clicks to sleep. I know I can probably use PowerTools to (re-) assign a shortcut, but I though I'd first ask if anyone else had this issue. Maybe a Windows Update buggered it up ?

Sir_George · Jan 18, 2024

cbreemer said:
Ever since I bought my PC with Windows 11, the Fn-F12 keyboard combination would put the computer to sleep. I was happy with that. But since a week or so, that suddenly does not work anymore, and I have no idea why. I've not changed anything. This is quite annoying as it now requires 3 mouse clicks to sleep. I know I can probably use PowerTools to (re-) assign a shortcut, but I though I'd first ask if anyone else had this issue. Maybe a Windows Update buggered it up ?

Based on what you provided as a time frame "a week or so" it may be associated with "Patch Tuesday." Again, based on the time frame, I would suggest doing a roll back to before the update; steps provided below.

Select Start > Settings > Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates . View update history.
On the list that appears, locate the update you want to remove, and then select Uninstall next to it.

If that fails to be the cause, you can always reinstall the update afterwards.

Try3 · Jan 18, 2024

Have any other Function keys changed their behaviour?
Does F12 now put your computer to sleep?
Does your computer maker / motherboard / Bios maker have anything to say about Function key behaviour?

All the best,
Denis

cbreemer · Jan 18, 2024

Sir_George said:
Based on what you provided as a time frame "a week or so" it may be associated with "Patch Tuesday." Again, based on the time frame, I would suggest doing a roll back to before the update; steps provided below.

Select Start > Settings > Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates . View update history.
On the list that appears, locate the update you want to remove, and then select Uninstall next to it.

If that fails to be the cause, you can always reinstall the update afterwards.

Many thanks Good Sir, also for the guidance because I've never had to uninstall an update before. Sure enough it was the latest update KB5033920 that screwed it up. Is it worth reporting this to MS you think ?

cbreemer · Jan 18, 2024

Try3 said:
Have any other Function keys changed their behaviour?
Does F12 now put your computer to sleep?
Does your computer maker / motherboard / Bios maker have anything to say about Function key behaviour?

All the best,
Denis

Thanks for the reply Denis. Nope, no other keys have changed their behavior, and F12 does not trigger the sleep. I have not checked the computer site of things. But rolling back KB5033920 made it work as before

Sir_George · Jan 18, 2024

cbreemer said:
Many thanks Good Sir, also for the guidance because I've never had to uninstall an update before. Sure enough it was the latest update KB5033920 that screwed it up. Is it worth reporting this to MS you think ?

Reporting it to MS can't hurt. Additionally, quite often when an update causes issues, the next update has a fix; just an FYI.

cbreemer · Jan 18, 2024

Sir_George said:
Reporting it to MS can't hurt. Additionally, most often when an update causes issues, the next update has a fix; just an FYI.

Thanks again. Indeed it happens often that such problems eventually go away so I'll take my chances with that.

Try3 · Jan 19, 2024

Windows does not provide an Fn-F12 keyboard shortcut for sleep [or anything else].
So I think your motherboard maker provided that for you.
[Which is why I asked about other keys changing - I was wondering if a multimedia keyboard toggle had been used accidentally.]
Unless, of course, you have a keyboard utility that you set up to achieve that functionality and either it has stopped running or it has lost some of its settings .

All the best,
Denis

cbreemer · Jan 19, 2024

Try3 said:
Windows does not provide an Fn-F12 keyboard shortcut for sleep [or anything else].
So I think your motherboard maker provided that for you.
[Which is why I asked about other keys changing - I was wondering if a multimedia keyboard toggle had been used accidentally.]
Unless, of course, you have a keyboard utility that you set up to achieve that functionality and either it has stopped running or it has lost some of its settings .

Thanks for thinking along with me !

I really don't know where this came from, it's always been so on this computer and I did not do anything that could explain it. I do use WinCompose but with default settings, just to be able to type the Euro symbol and diacritical characters.

I suppose it could be the computer itself but I combed through all the settings in the boot-time F2 setup and could not find anything. And the fact remains that update KB5033920 broke it, which I guess would be unlikely had it been a hardware feature. Anyway I'm happy to have it back now and just hope subsequent updates will leave it alone. Otherwise I may have to look at PowerTools shortcuts.