Console disappears

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=283

This problem is caused by the language setting of your Windows Operating System.

European, German and French/Canadian users (among others) are affected by this for the most part.

If you are using a non-American English keyboard setting then you will need to either reset your keyboard to be United States English or you will need to bind your console key to a different character then the default "~".

Bind another key to the "toggleconsole" command. Not all keys will bind to console, avoid any normal typing characters or numbers.

Function Keys work well for this (F1 - F12).

You will probably need to edit your config.cfg or userconfig.cfg to add the bind (use notepad).

example:

 bind "F12" "toggleconsole"

The usual default is:

 bind "~" "toggleconsole"