Ctrl Alt F8 disconnects displays?

Question

Learning debugging in PhpStorm and keep accidentally hitting Ctrl + Alt + F8. I use 3 displays this disconnects the two remotes and goes back to just the laptop.

I cannot see this documented anywhere (running Win 10).

The worst part is that hitting the combination again does NOT reconnect the displays.

Anyone know either:

• combination to reverse the effect - IE reconnect displays

• how I can stop it or

• a tool that will help me find out where it is firing from (motherboard/Windows/Intel/nVidia/USB monitor driver - goodness knows where).

Grateful for a helping hand. F8 in various combinations are the debugging shortcuts for PhpStorm and I keep hitting Ctrl + Alt + F8 accidentally. I am about to throw a monitor out of the window.

EDIT Apologies. When I posted this it said Ctrl + Shift + F8 in error. Hope did not confuse anyone.

Oops misremembered my own post!.

Answer 1

What causes this is additional software that comes with the Intel Graphics chip. This software monitors for the Ctrl + Alt + F8 shortcut and then resets the display settings to a default value.

While the "Intel HD Graphics Control Panel" setup utility allows configuring keyboard shortcuts for other tasks, it does specifically say that you cannot change or disable the shortcut for the "reset settings" task.

The only way to disable this is by disabling the Windows Service installed by the Intel Software.

1. Go to Windows Services list

2. Find the "Intel(R) HD Graphics Control Panel" service.

3. Disable it (open its properties, stop it AND make sure to set its startup type to "Disabled")

4. You may need to reboot the computer once.

---

Note that this answer was written in 2016. Newer versions of the Intel Graphics software have options to disable the hotkey without having to disable the service. See the comments of this answer on superuser