Ive been playing crysis original , warhead, wars "bit", and now Crysis 2 and i have done my share of tweaking the visuals on the first one "for best look/performance".

I have been on laptops for the past 5 years and i could not open my console in any versions of this game. That is, i also have external keyboard, i tried updating keyboard drivers, different versions of OS etc. but no luck ...

The only thing that fixed it, was going into your device manager and looking for anything that has a name "CIR Reciever" (mine is Nuvoton CIR Reciever) and it is the infrared port that hooks my remote control to my laptop. After disabling this device without a restart you are able to hit `/~ and voila console is up.

Hope this helps some of you there ... (tested on hp and acer laptop)

have you tried plugging in an external keyboard? i remember my laptop had the same issue were the "`" key would not work. but plugging in an external resolved this.