I WANT MY WINDOWS KEY TO WORK GODDAMNIT… wtf. No, Control-Escape isn’t good enough for me!! It was my meta key for winamp…. I don’t want to use the stupid buttons. I like normal keys, damnit.
August 23, 2007
JOURNAL: The Death Of “Storm”, Day… er… Part 7
Posted by Clint under Clint, Complaints, Computer, Hardware, Journal, Microsoft, Operating Systems, People, Technology[16] Comments
August 24, 2007 at 12:05 AM
The windows key isn’t a normal key. That was added on. I remember oldskool keyboards that had a space there instead of a key.
August 24, 2007 at 1:30 AM
I haven’t seen a keyboard without a windows key in years. I have however seen them without the right-click key. Drives me nuts. Especially when someone steals my mouse. And I’m too lazy to go search the building for another mouse that’s not in use.
August 24, 2007 at 7:49 AM
It really, really sucks for the windows key to not work. It hasn’t worked for awhile, but it wasn’t an issue back when this was the kitchen computer. And it’s not working on multiple keyboards (computer has 2 or 3 keyboard hooked up)
August 24, 2007 at 2:09 PM
2 or 3 simultaneous keyboards? Or you tried them one after the other? Of course, I could give you the same advice Compaq gave me when my hotkeys stopped working. Reformat your hardrive and reinstall everything. :)
Dumbasses! I’m never calling them again.
August 24, 2007 at 2:12 PM
I’ve never not had at least 2 keyboards and at least 2 mice on my main (TV) computer. But there may have been a 3rd one in there. I did of course try unplugging one just in case there was some sort of interference, but really.. There’s just no reason for the windows key not to work.
Ctrl-Esc works… and it’s the same wireless keyboard as before. Very shitty.
August 24, 2007 at 3:44 PM
Do some of the windows key shortcuts work? window+E (windows explorer), windows+R(run)?
August 24, 2007 at 3:49 PM
Nope.
[If they did, I wouldn't be claiming the windows key didn't work...:)]
Windows+M is the best one — minimize all windows!
Windows-Tab was great, but XP took it out/changed it’s behavior.
Sigh.
I used girder to make the PAUSE button pause winamp, in addition to ctrl-alt-d (yuck), and the actual “pause button” which is on each keyboard (Requires 2 different software!)
August 24, 2007 at 4:01 PM
At this point I’d say Girder looks like it might be a likely suspect. Since it does to thinks like keymapping, maybe your windows key somehow got mapped to .. do nothing.
Also, do BOTH windows keys not work?
August 24, 2007 at 4:27 PM
Well, I thought that too. I mean, within 5 minutes of noticing, I shut down girder.
And winamp too, since it was set to use the windows key for its global hotkeys.
Of course, winamp was never a problem on the previous computer, NOR was girder — but ya never know.
But nope. Didn’t fix it.
August 24, 2007 at 11:06 PM
If registry changes were made, shutting down a program might not fix it. I have heard that some things like keymapping and enabling are stored in the registry. Don’t know too much about that though.
My guess is, at some point, some program you installed fucked with the windows registry and messed with the functionality of the windows key.
August 24, 2007 at 11:08 PM
BTW, what did windows-tab used to do? I’ve never used that one. Just ALT-tab.
August 25, 2007 at 10:53 AM
Windows tab would let you cycle through your tasks in the order they are on the taskbar. Windows-tab would cause the very first item in your taskbar to be hilighted. So, if you wanted to switch to your very left taskbar task without using a mouse, it would be Windows-Tab, followed by Enter. If you wanted to go to the 2nd taskbar item, it would be Windows-Tab, right-arrow, Enter.
As opposed to Alt-Tab, where going to a certain task may be alt-tab once, 2X, or 3X, and every time you switch to it, it may be a different number of times you hit tab. Windows-Tab is simply quicker if you know where you are going (and it happens to be the left of the taskbar).
Alt-ESC is great too, just makes the front task go to the back. It’s like a non-specific alt-tab.
But anyway, I had that same registry thought too, since a long time ago I had installed IHateThisKey. It’s a program you run to disable the windows key while playing games such as quake.
Thing is, it was no longer installed.
I re-installed it, told it to disable the windows key, then told it to enable the windows key. No go. I un-installed it and again, no go.
But it is indeed possible that something is left in the registry. Argh. Gotta research THAT now?
August 25, 2007 at 12:42 PM
Yeah, that seems like alikely culprit too.This link might be of use to you:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:C03BBqqpn2QJ:www.sodudeman.com/tlink.htm+IHateThisKey+registry&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
Alt-Esc. I’ll have to remember that one. The ultimate boss key.
August 25, 2007 at 4:27 PM
Nope. Don’t have any of those registry entries either. That’s the 2nd different place (well, it was 2, so really 2nd and 3rd) I’ve looked in the registry to find ‘typical’ windows-key disabling registry keys.
It just isn’t gonna work, ever, I fear.
August 25, 2007 at 4:43 PM
More goofiness: With Girder, I created a new command that would send the left windows key. I then hit ‘learn event’ and hit my left windows key, which gives it a code of 00000000 (very statistically unlikely!).
So, via kludge, I can hit my left windows key, which sends the wrong scancode, and then girder will send an actual left windows key.
This actually doesn’t fix any of my issues other than the start menu. No windows-key combinations can be used. I can’t use windows-m to minimize; it will just go to the first item in my start bar that starts with ‘m’, as if I hit “windows” followed by “m”.
I did indeed find a scancode in the registry and deleted it. Perhaps after rebooting the problem will be fixed? Shyeah.
August 25, 2007 at 5:37 PM
Yup. It was the registry key! Not in where those pages said it was, but I searched for “scancode”. after rebooting – fixed!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks!