LHC@home

I started crunching Theory tasks on a newly bought notebook, and after opening the VM console, neither ALT + F1, ALT + F2 nor ALT- F3 are working. The console does not react at all.
Just be sure, I tried the functions of the ALT-key as well as the functions of the F1, F2, F3 keys separetely, outside the LHC VM console - the keys were working the way they are supposed to. So the keys are definitely NOT defective (you never know with a newly bought device :-)

So, what is wrong? Any hints?

Maybe the problem is with the VB version; when installing the other day, Oracle showed 6.1.16-140961 as the newest version, so I took it.
When I now was checking the VB versions on some other of my PCs, I found out that one on which I installed VB some time ago ago, has 6.1.18; and yet another one even 6.1.2.
I always thought that the version numbers are in an ascending sequence. Obviously not. Or does Oracle call back versions sometimes?

At any rate, before I uninstall 6.1.16 (just in case that it is the root of my problem), I meant to ask if anyone here is also using 6.1.16 - with a working LHC VM console on Theory tasks.

Only Enterprise and Professional of Windows 10 have Remotedesktop-Software!
Boinc have Virtualbox 6.1.12 as default with Boinc 7.16.11.

You can still view from VBox, press the show button.

I find if Alt-F2 is not working most of the time it crashed somehow so I kill them

You can still view from VBox, press the show button.

Viewing VBox by pushing the "open VM console" button on the left side of the BOINC Manager works anyway. But I can only view this one window that opens. The f-buttons don't react.
Same is true when I open the VBox and press the show button - as suggested by you. I can see the initial window, but the f-buttons do not react either.
I never had this problem before, although I have been crunching LHC VM tasks for years.

Problem solved:
by coincidence I found out that on this new notebook one has to push alt + fn + f2 (or f1, or f3) simultanously in order to get the desired result.

On none of my other machines I ever had to do push the fn button.

Very interesting.
Just checked my wife's company notebook.
It's a Lenovo and indeed, compared to all other Notebooks I currently have access to they changed the keyboard layout and you have to press that additional "Fn" key left of the space key.

Don't know if this can be configured in the BIOS.

At any rate, whereever there are instructions here in the forum regarding access to the various VM console contents, this new information should be included.

On my work Lenovo, if you press the Fn + Esc together you get the FnLock function and after that you don't need to press the Fn together with Alt. The Fn is locked on (the Esc/FnLock key has a led to indicate the lock).

---

thanks, Harri, for the hint.
However - here, with the brandnew notebook Lenovo Ideapad 3, this does not work, unfortunately :-(
Also, there are no leds on either the fn-key or the esc-key. There is a led only on the Num-lock key.