AutoHotkey Community

vith · Guest

I've been having hotkeys stick with a script of mine for a long time, so I decided to reduce it to the very basics. Chris maybe you can try this out and experience the issue yourself. This is AutoHotkey v1.0.47.05 on Windows XP.

Run the script and open a text editor.
Press [D] to start (and stop) the character sending.
Hold [F] and observe that when the key is physically held, the first counter increments.
Tap [F] at a steady pace until you notice the script miss a release event.
Observe that the counter is not incrementing as it did before when you were physically holding the key.
You'll also notice that if you have sending disabled, events aren't missed. You can reset the counters with [G].

Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10450

Although I couldn't get it to miss any of 500 events (even while it was sending), I believe you that it happens on some systems like yours. Perhaps it has to do with keyboard driver, system load, or some conflict with other software that's installed.

In any case, I'm not sure what can be done to fix it because the program relies on the OS for notification of keystrokes. If you haven't already, you could try raising the priority of your script via Process, Priority,, High If that doesn't help, a possible workaround is to use GetKeyState (perhaps via a timer) to check whether certain keys are in the wrong state and adjust accordingly (even restarting the script, if necessary).

vith · Guest

It's random of course, but it gets stuck for me on average every 75 events I'd guess. Seems like the faster the timer, the more missed events occur. It really seems like it only misses events if they coincide exactly with a Send. I'm using a dual core Athlon64, but I have the driver for it installed which syncs the TSC registers between cores. I'm using a SysInternals keyboard filter driver (Ctrl2Cap). And system load doesn't seem to matter. Happens with and without WoW running.

As you can see in the script, GetKeyState is the meat of it; the event handlers always fail at the same time as GetKeyState. Does GetKeyState make a system call every time, or is it just looking up the key state based on the events AHK has seen (and is missing)?

I think i'll be fine if I detect the (lack of) autorepeat though.

Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10450

GetKeyState() makes a system call every time unless you specify the "P" flag, which retrieves the state AutoHotkey's keyboard/mouse hook thinks the button or key is physically in. More info:

tsomzing · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 1

I'm having a similar problem, only it's far more pronounced than what Vith is seeing... I get the upkey event missed something closer to 1 in 10 times, even when turning the autohotkey process's priority to above normal.

It's possible that this is because I'm using an Ergodex and a g15 simultaneously with autohotkey, and both programs are running their own internal macro detection programs and drivers.

Perhaps one of these drivers catches the key up event and handles it internally, causing the OS to somehow miss the event having occurred?

It does seem odd that Autohotkey responds correctly to the key down state, and then later the key up state a large percentage of the time. I'm guessing the Ergodex must be responsible for somehow incorrectly notifying the os that the key is up?