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

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!

One day it happened to me when I made some changes to the project and solution files in my ASP .NET project. When I opened it in Visual Studio, it allowed me to rebuild but not to run nor debug (the menu option didn't appear and the Ctrl + F5 didn't work).

What I did to make it work again was right-click over the solution, into the Visual Studio "Solution Explorer" tree tab in the right, where all the files of your project appear, and select properties.

Then, select there a project, and put it as start project.

Perhaps this is your problem here. If not, I hope it can help someone in the future.

Chances are you changed your default settings. Go to Tools->Import and Export Settings... Select 'Reset all', Click 'Next' and choose the 'Visual C# Development Settings' option.

I had the same problem. In my case, I just deleted the folder containing my project and created a new one. Everything went well.

Hello from the future.

Mac 2021 M1:

Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences.
Click Keyboard.
Select "Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys".

Not sure how it changed to begin with (probably happy fingers on my part)

should check for Fn + f5, which between window button and the left crtl