Visual studio commands don't work. ctrl + f5 doesn't run my application

Question

Might be a ridiculous suggestion but does your keyboard have some kind of "F Lock" key? Happened to me after I got a new keyboard and accidentally hit it. Didn't even know it was there :)

Before you trash all your settings, consider just resetting the Keyboard preferences:

In Tools / Options / Environment / Keyboard there's a drop-down for your Keyboard scheme and next to it a Reset button. Make sure the mapping scheme is set to whatever you want then hit the Reset button.

I have had a similar problem where some of my shortcuts (such as the Alt+Shift+F10 intellisense shortcut) stopped working...

I fixed it by going to Tools -> Import and Export Settings -> Reset all settings.

I was able to reimport my saved settings after I had reset them also but only with out the broken short cuts!

I had a similar question, and reading this thread led me to an answer which is similar to the f-Lock key answer. I'm using a new laptop, and re-introducing myself to programming. When the book said press Ctrl-F5 I did so and the only thing that happened was that my monitor got slightly dimmer, though it returned to normal brightness as soon as I clicked on a few other things. What I noticed after reading this thread is that this new-fangled keyboard has a blue Fn key, and all the function key names are printed in blue. In other words, to get the function key functionality you have to be holding down the blue Fn key when you tap the actual function key. So F5 becomes Fn-F5 and Ctrl-F5 becomes Ctrl-Fn-F5. This is on a Dell Inspiron 1564. This is not quite as egregious as a F-Lock key, so I hope I'll get used to it soon.