How are you able to view the hints? I've loaded on a Windows 7 and a Window XP machine. I change the keyboard to MAP mode and hover over the onscreen buttons with the mouse.
I recall in HOG 2 there was an option to enable or disable onscreen hints in a settings menu.
I order to get hints to work for me, I have to have a window open (any pallet, output, programmer, whatever), and then click somewhere on the front panel to draw focus to it. Then when I hover over keys, I get keyboard shortcut hints, whether I'm in MAP mode or not.
Funny thing I've found also is that in H4PC, if I don't have any windows open, the front panel will stop responding to any mouse activity. If I then click on pallets, output, whatever to open a window, everything works fine. Don't know if that's a bug or what. Or maybe it's a Win8 thing. I am trying H4PC out on my win8 touch screen. I was going to test this on my Win7 pc that I've been running but I'm now getting "Hogclock init fail" when I try and start H4 on it. Off to trouble shoot that problem...
Update: Tried this on my Win7 and don't have any of the same behavior. Front panel/mouse interaction works fine in whatever situation, but I can't get any keyboard hints at all.