AutoHotkey Community

[JFLECOOL2]

OOOH VERY USERFUL! THANK MAN!

[Freighter]

Not sure if it was mentioned.
Not really a shortcut but useful when you just need your computer to startup with less running.
After logging in and it says "Loading your personal Settings" hold down ctrl.
It bypasses all the items in the [StartMenu -> Programs -> Startup] folder
However things in the run registry entries still startup

I 'moved' all the none essential entries to the startup folder for this purpose

[corrupt]

[Serenity]

Hotkeys for Windows help files (.chm):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255090/

[SKAN]

@Serenity : Many of your posts have been useful to me when I was a newbie .. Nice to see you after a very long time

[Serenity]

Hi Skan! It's nice to be back. :)

[riverbeauty3]

I was holding my son (8 months old) and working at the keyboard .... enough said right? well he hit something and it brought up a window that said "set desktop background" it was not the "display properties" and did not have any tabs on it.... it was simply a desktop background manager of some kind... anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me what button (or combo of buttons) he pushed to get that to come up????

[JDN]

I was surprised no one has posted any info concering the NOWINKEYS.

When I first installed XP, I found there were 16 hotkeys reserved by Windows.

Seven were reserved by Explorer. I have never found any way to take control over these. They are:
F12 SHI+F12 CTL+ESC ALT+CTL+DEL CTL+SHI+ESC WIN+L WIN+U

As well, there are nine reserved but that can be eliminated by setting the NOWINKEYS variable in the Registry. They are:
WIN+B, WIN+D, WIN+E, WIN+F, WIN+M, WIN+R, WIN+F1, WIN+TAB, WIN+Pause

You can run the program REGEDIT (aka REGEDT32) and change the variable NOWINKEYS to 1. The fully qualified key is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoWinKeys

I hope it is considered OK to refer to NOWINKEYS as a "variable". I forgot the correct name.

I found this out by writing a small Delphi program that reports all the hotkeys currently being used on a system. I am happy to make this freely available (both the source and the .EXE) to users of AutoHotkey.net. Unfortunately, I have many important things to do before I can do that. So it may be a week or so before I do it.

In the meantime, if anyone knows how to wrestle control of the seven hotkeys (F12 SHI+F12 CTL+ESC ALT+CTL+DEL CTL+SHI+ESC WIN+L WIN+U) away from Windows so that they may be defined and used by AutoHotkey, I'd really like to hear how.

Dang! I forgot to check all 6 previous pages of this thread and see that Chris already posted something about NOWINKEY. Oh well, I will leave this post in case anyone may find it interesting or has something to say about my little program that reports all hotkeys currently in use.

I find it useful because very often, people will create some hotkey in a shortcut menu to something on their desktop or start menu and then forget about it. That can cause terrible problems because they will then not be able to define that hotkey in another way and it is extremely difficult to find any hotkeys defined in such a way that have been long since forgotten - but still remain active.

[engunneer]

A often requested item is to find out which program is reserving a certain key. Can your program help in that regard?

As far as F12, ^Esc, and (most) of those. I have used them just fine with Autohotkey.
_________________
Unless otherwise noted, all code is untested.
Common Answers: 1.(Loops, Viruses, etc.) 2. Search 3.RTFM

[JDN]

My program - HOTKEY REPORTER - only lists the name of the hotkey - not which program is reserving that key.

The program HOTKEY DETECTIVE shows both the name of the hotkey as well as which program is reserving that key.

But this should not be a problem because HOTKEY REPORTER lists all hotkeys currently being used while HOTKEY DETECTIVE only lists those that were defined on or under the Desktop or Start Menu folders.

The reason I say this should not be a problem is that there are only two ways to define a hotkey that I know of. The first is to create a shortcut to some app or document and then assign a shortcut key to it and place that shortcut (a .LNK file) on or under the Desktop or Start Menu folders.

The second way is to use a hotkey manager program like AutoHotkey.

Typically, the really big problems with hotkeys occur when when hotkeys are defined on or under the Desktop or Start Menu folders. The reason this method can cause terrible problems is because these hotkeys can be reserved by installation programs that create hotkey links to their software and then make those links HIDDEN SYSTEM files. Or they can be created by people but then forgotten for a long time. Perhaps it is only months or years later that the problem occurs.

Defining a hotkey by using a Hotkey Manager (like AutoHotkey) should not cause problems because the user can always examine the hotkey definition file and see the hotkey. If the user stops using that hotkey manager, then the hotkey won't be defined. So, it's a much smaller problem.

I hope I explained that OK. I may not be correct. But if not, I'd sure appreciate learning why. To the best of my knowledge, any hotkey defined fits into one category or the other.

In any case, I have uploaded both HOTKEY DETECTIVE and HOTKEY REPORTER onto AutoHotkey.net and you may download them via:

HOTKEY REPORTER
http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/JDNHR.ZIP

HOTKEY DETECTIVE
http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/HKD.ZIP

You may also be interested in my post that discusses these programs.

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=162037#162037

[JDN]

I should also mention that the output from HOTKEY DETECTIVE tends to be much smaller than the output from HOTKEY REPORTER.

This is only to be expected since if someone uses a hotkey manager (like AutoHotkey), they usually define a fair number of hotkeys and can easily see the hotkeys they have defined and know which programs they are associate with.

By comparison, the total number of hotkeys that have been defined for icons on your desktop or your start menu tend to be quite limited.

So, once you identify the hotkeys that are likely to be causing poblems, you can resolve those problems - usually as follows:

1) try to find the icon that starts the program using the /S and /A parms of the DIR command as follows:

DIR /A /S or DIR /A /S *.LNK

2) try to identify the file that starts the program in question. It is usually a link file (.LNK) that has its icon on your desktop or your start menu.

3) either delete it using the /F parm of the DELETE command (which forces the deletion)

4) Or .. change the attributes to remove the HIDDEN SYSTEM and READ-ONLY attributes using the ATTRIB command like:

ATTRIB -S -H -R FILENAME.LNK

Then you can easily see it and delete it.

P.S. When running HOTKEY REPORTER, it's best to put the output into some file. Otherwise it's a pain to see it because it will roll off the CMD window. So, to put the output into a file called OUTPUT.TXT, run the following command:

JDNHR > OUTPUT.TXT

[Mustang]

Can anyone tell me the...

[please help]

♀☺☻♥♦♣♠•◘○

what are those ^^^^^ called?

you make them by holding the alt key and hitting the number keys and then letting go

[engunneer]

on your computer, hit #r then type charmap and hit enter.
_________________
Unless otherwise noted, all code is untested.
Common Answers: 1.(Loops, Viruses, etc.) 2. Search 3.RTFM

[jballi]