I'm having a problem figuring out this hotkey thing. The hotkey menu pops up seemingly at random while I am wandering around. This causes all kinds of problems as there are things you cannot do while the hotkey grid is visible on screen.,

It also will pop up while I am in the pipboy inventory menus...preventing any change in weapon/armor.

It took me awhile to figure out how to get rid of the hotkeys when they would pop up , but hitting seems to work. IT is a large hassle tho!

Any hints ...I can't find anything in the manual.

ps. This is the PC version..playing with Win 7 64 bit ATI 5850

I don't know if you can stop them from popping up entirely (a mod maybe) but they shouldn't pop up on their own. If they're popping up it's because you're pressing the keys too long.

For instance, to set the hotkey for a weapon in pipboy screen, you mouse-hover over the item in question and press the number key you want it to be for a while. Are you pressing number keys while in the pipboy for some reason?
Outside of the pipboy, same thing. If you want to switch weapons via number hotkeys, if you press too long the grid pops up. It doesn't take much, either. But for me they fade away in a couple seconds and it doesn't impede anything, so I dunno. Maybe that's not actually what you're referring to....

Hmm....

That's really strange. ...I am pressing nothing at all when the grid pops up. And it doesn't fade away ....it stays on the screen until I hit .

Must be some wierd bug/glitch

completely non-sarcastically, have you tried giving your keyboard a clean? You can get this type of problem from a teeny tiny piece of dust stuck under a number key!

if not I've no idea!