Mac OSX: ‘Cannot Send F11 Keystroke’

KB ID 0001441

Problem

I was building some HP blade servers today via iLO, and while trying to install ESX, I reached this stage;

HP Send F11

Pressing F11 on a mac just increases the volume, and with the other function keys (F1 to F10) you simply press ‘fn’ and the appropriate F key, and it works properly. But not on a mac, ‘Fn+F11’ just shows you your desktop.

Even changing function keys in the keyboard settings has no effect!

Solution

System Preferences > Mission Control.

Mission control Settings Mac OSX

Change ‘Show Desktop’ to another key (in this case F13).

Problem solved!

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Author: PeteLong

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12 Comments

  1. Very helpful for a mac user in the exact same situation! Thanks.

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  2. Thanks for this, just what I needed! Updating esxi on a dell server from a mac.

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  3. Thanks, saved me hours of frustration

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  4. that was exactly the issue I have. Thanks a lot, changing the hot keys of f11 and f12 works.

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  5. thanks alot
    saved my time 😉

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  6. Thanks, was in this exact situation

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  7. Thanx for this great tip. I saw this tip years ago. Than I bought me a new mac and run into the same problem. Than I found this webpage again 🙂

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