HotKeys in Registry?

August 22, 200917 yr

22August2009

Greetings.

I would like to assign a keyboard combination to something,

but XP will not accept the combination on one of my XP laptops.

I have already entered this combination on my other two XP laptops.

Apparently XP still has this combination assigned to a .lnk or something

that no longer exists. How/Where in the registry could I find/delete

the entry where XP has stored this combination to free it up?

Any helpful replies/insights appreciated.

Thank you.

Regards,

AEN

Æ

August 25, 200917 yr

If you are referring to HotStart, then you may need a BIOS update, or else your notebook may not even support it at all.

Otherwise, try lookup up keyboard re-mappers and see if some give you that option. I had to do such a thing in order to assign a function to the F15 key (Mac keyboard on PC) for a game I had tried. I remember those programs I had tried (many did not have the function i needed) they had a ton of other options. I do not have any left saved so I can't give you any examples.

August 25, 200916 yr

How/Where in the registry could I find/delete
the entry where XP has stored this combination to free it up?

You can try looking in :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey

Might not apply if the mapping was done through some other app.

GL

September 4, 200916 yr

Author

4September2009

Greetings.

I solved the problem in question with some tomfoolery

but I (and others) am(are) still looking for a way to see

which hotkeys XP has as assigned to which apps/utils/etc ...

Someone has a utility which shows which hotkeys XP has as assigned

but not to which app/util/etc ...

Any helpful replies/insights appreciated.

Thank you.

Regards,

AEN

Æ

February 26, 201214 yr

Author

26February2012

Greetings.

It has been a long time since I have had an XP hotkey problem,

but this weekend I have come across another.

I assigned Alt-Shift-1, A-S-2, A-S-3 & A-S-4 as local hotkeys to a freeware file manager.

These hotkeys work fine on 2 of my 3 XP laptops.

AS1, AS2 & AS4 are dead on the 3rd XP laptop.

They do nothing in the freeware file manager.

I cannot set these hotkeys in any app/util that sets hotkeys when the user types them.

XP acts like these hotkeys are active/global hotkeys,

but the hotkeys combos do nothing when executed.

The AHks utility does NOT list these hotkey combos as assigned.

I tried killing off every non-XP process 1 by 1 to no avail.

I did a safe mode boot with no networking, no antivirus & no firewall to no avail.

The hotkeys work fine on this laptop when I do a BartPE/XPE boot.

I was "demo-ing" some freeware file managers - most were install-free/portable but not all.

Under the safe mode boot there were only half a dozen processes running,

so it seems to me the problem must be in the registry somewhere.

I am at the moment a loss for how to re-enable these hotkey combos.

Any helpful replies/insights appreciated.

Thank you.

Regards,

AEN

Æ

February 26, 201214 yr

Maybe some accessibility option?

Or "scancode map" (google for it). A registry key - it's a pretty complex scheme that I don't understand quite well, but maybe there is some program that can work with it... (for example, nLite uses it for "disable Windows keys").

GL

September 21, 201213 yr

Author

21September2012

I still have no idea what is intercepting those hotkey combos globally, but

I have found that "whatever it is" does NOT intercept those hotkey combos when

I put them in 1 of my custom/persistent scripts ... which I also do not understand ...

That is, those hotkey combos do not work at all (on this specific XP laptop) ...

no matter what window/app is "active"; however, some script like»

#IfWinActive, "whatever"
!+1::whateverAction1
!+2::whateverAction2
!+4::whateverAction4

does capture those hotkey combos & execute whatever I have scripted ...

September 23, 201213 yr

My thought over here.

(Read Ethervane ActiveHotkeys help file to get some insight)

In short, the author said can't retrieve programmatically what program is using certain hotkey if already taken up.

Cheers

September 23, 201213 yr

Author

23September2012

The following was/is an (indirect) reference to Ethervane»

but I (and others) am(are) still looking for a way to see
which hotkeys XP has as assigned to which apps/utils/etc ...
Someone has a utility which shows which hotkeys XP has as assigned
but not to which app/util/etc ...

As I posted here»

The AHks utility does NOT list these hotkey combos as assigned.

Ethervane does NOT show Alt-Shift-1, Alt-Shift-2 nor Alt-Shift-4 as assigned on the XP laptop in question ...

which makes the situation even more enigmatic ...

I wish MSFN lived up to its tagline ...

it does not in my experience ...

September 23, 201213 yr

I wish MSFN lived up to its tagline ...
it does not in my experience ...

Yeah, life is tough.... :wacko: ... but whining :ph34r: does not help in the least, as a matter of fact, makes life even worse....

JFYI, a number of laptops have the Fn key and often it is used in combination with numerical keys.

It is possible that the actual hardware is actually interfering with your assigned hot-keys.

If I were you :w00t: , I would try the same hot-keys on an external keyboard connected to the laptop and see if the behaviour is the same (and I would also take it easier )