9.15.2011

F11 on a Mac for ESX Installs

To save everyone time out there, I am pretty sure that Fn+Ctrl+option+F11 in Mac OS Snow Leopard would pass F11 through to the ESX installation menu.  This does not appear to be the case in Lion.  After hours of struggling to find the correct key sequence this evening, your best bet is to go into the System Preferences and do the following:

1. Go into the Mission Control settings and set 'Show Desktop' to be any other F- key besides F11.
2. Go into the keyboard settings and check the box that says 'Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.

After this, you will be able to just press only the F11 key in order to pass it through to the ESX install.

If you are running VMware Fusion and have a Windows virtual machine on your Mac, there is also an option at the top, Virtual Machine -> Send Key -> F11, to send the appropriate function key to the installation menu.

3 comments:

  1. You are a life saver!! Struggled with "screens of death" trying to install ESX using a Mac Keyboard until I found this!

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  2. Just hold Command while pressing the Fn+F11 key to get the F11 inside the VM.

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  3. THANK you! 2 more min and I was about to smash it

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