Keyboards & Touchpads

[DHD8353]

I have a Toshiba Satellite A45-S250.  The hotkeys aren't working, like FN + F5 to toggle between external monitors, FN + F6/F7 to decrease/increase the screen brightness, etc.  I know they used to work, and I don't know what made them stop working.   

I downloaded the pm200dhkx.exe file (Toshiba Hotkey Utility for Display Devices) and installed it, but that didn't help. 

What other suggestions can anyone offer?  I'd be grateful for assistance.  The ability to use FN + F5 is important to allow my laptop to hookup to a laptop projector.  Thanks! 

[DHD8353]

Never mind, I figured it out!  I found in another post that I first had to install sm30acpx.exe (Toshiba ACPI Common Modules for Windows XP/2000) and then pm200dhkx.exe (Toshiba Hotkey Utility for Display Devices).  That seemed to do the trick!

[Jerry_Lippey]

Yep. Sometimes it's the common module that makes the trouble.

[DHD8353]

As a follow-up, when you solve one problem, you often create another!  The new problem is CPU usage spikes.

I installed sm30acpx.exe (Toshiba ACPI Common Modules for Windows XP/2000) and then pm200dhkx.exe (Toshiba Hotkey Utility for Display Devices).  The hotkeys then worked properly. 

But, I noticed that the CPU Usage spiked dramatically every 5 seconds or so, to around 60-80% CPU usage, even when there were no programs open or running.  The "Performance" graph in Windows Task Manager looked like the heartbeat on a medical patient's ECG machine -- low for a few seconds, spike to 60-70% CPU usage, and immediately fall back to low.  The effect on performance was unacceptable -- audio/video would stutter every 5 seconds when the CPU usage spiked, programs ran slower, etc.  

From the "Processes" tab in Windows Task Manager, I identified the culprit to be "Hotkey.exe".  I right-clicked on it in the Processes tab and selected "End Process".  I then went back to the "Performance" tab in Windows Task Manager and confirmed that the CPU usage spikes did indeed stop when the Hotkey.exe process was ended.  Surprisingly, the hotkeys (like FN + F5) still functioned after terminating the Hotkey.exe process. 

So, every time I rebooted, I was manually going into Windows Task Manager and terminating the Hotkey.exe process as above to avoid CPU usage spikes.  I finally went into MSCONFIG.exe and disabled HOTKEY from the "Startup" tab.  That solved the CPU usage spikes problem, and the Hotkeys still work.   

Just thought you might want to know, in case you ever run into this. 

Any thoughts on why the Hotkey.exe would cause CPU usage spikes? Or why the Hotkeys would continue to work even when the Hotkey.exe process is ended/terminated?

[Jerry_Lippey]

Good detective work! Thanks for all that information.

I don't know what those Toshiba programs do. (I'm a Windows specialist and don't have a Toshiba laptop here.)

From what I've read, the hotkey functions are provided by THotUtil.exe.