Q2: Waiting doesn't work for me. Other shortcuts are disabled as well
(e.g., CTL-A). Crazy as it sounds, CTL-ALT-DEL immediately followed by ESC
seems to free up the keyboard, but this is based on very limited
experience. Give it a try.
I don't know if something has changed on my computer, but I am no longer able to reproduce the problem...
I also seem to recall that those keybord function keys were not responsive in other applications unless I rebooted. .