how to get rid of an unwanted shortkey

[evamaria]

Hello everybody.

I bought an old Toshiba laptop with Windows XP, with no CD/DVD or image, so I have to accept the operating system as it is, more or less, and the vendor pretends to not knowing the system, so he can't help me.

Now this system has a shortkey, which is Alt-rightarrow for context menu. Unfortunately, I need Alt-rightarrow for better things than context menu, but this shortkey overrides even native Alt-rightarrow key in my applications, so that they become unavailable, and the unwanted context menu appearing instead.

So I got rid of any service that might cause this, for example 00thotkey.exe and others, but the problem prevails, and I don't have any idea to get gid of this shortkey now.

Could anybody tell me where to search for a possible cause?

Do you know a tool that could identify such a cause, and which for example, when I press Alt-rightarrow, and the context menu appears again, would identify which process made appear the context menu there?

Otherwise, I'm quite happy with my purchase, so I absolutely need to get rid of this shortkey. When I search the web for "alt right arrow context menu", there is no information, so it seems to be a proprietary thing caused by a special tool on my system. It goes without sying, though, that there is no macro program running.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Curt]

Welcome to DC, evamaria, where the forum of course will be pleased to help you, if possible, but you might also try http://superuser.com...hortcuts-currently-i or in one of their linked articles, or maybe post at http://www.bleepingc...me-and-professional/

Meanwhile, you could try to overwrite the unwanted key: http://qliner.com/hotkeys/
QLiner has been abandoned for some years, but it suits XP just fine :-)

[evamaria]

Thank you, Curt!

In your link to superuser.com, they mention Process Monitor (ProcMon), so I installed that, and it did not show me the hotkey trigger, but showed me other services running in general, so I tried some others and deleted them, and now this hotkey is gone, and without my system going unstable, so the problem is solved!

I wasn't aware of the free Qliner hotkey macro program, so I went to install that, too, but then it asked for Net Framework 2, so I abandoned this idea since I think if I want a macro program, Net Framework 2 will not be necessary in general. I had tried some macro programs in the past, and they didn't ask for Net Framework 2, at least, and that laptop only has 512 kb of memory, so I tried to avoid things not absolutely necessary.

But as said, the unwanted hotkey is gone, and I'm very happy and thankful for that. Big help, Curt, thank you very, very much!

[Curt]

Good to hear of your success :-)

-----------------------------
The following 6 year old quote is merely because of your 512MB MemoryLane
incl the mentioning of ProcMon and QLiner:

Flashnote by Softvoile Company http://softvoile.com/flashnote/

M8 Free Clipboard http://m8software.co...reeclip/freeclip.htm

QLiner Hotkeys makes the fastest way the prettiest way
... (but their zip is too simple) http://qliner.com/hotkeys/overview.htm

7-zip - the free $20 way. http://www.7-zip.org/

Process Explorer & Procmon by SysInternals http://www.microsoft...ternals/default.mspx

PS Tray Factory - $25 at http://www.pssoftlab.com/

Process Tamer was well needed at this old 500 MHz, 320 RAM, Win2K.

StartRight by the Jackass.. http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/113/

Quick ShutDown by ShatRan Software at http://www.winutility.com/qsd/

COA2 (send "change of address" notifications to Windows if you relocate a program) http://www.pcmag.com...2/0,4149,9505,00.asp - has not been updated since 2001  and yet is $8 (and not for XP) !!!  - but I don't know of any other program with this 'coa' feature. Do you?

CCleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com

TClockEx - (I run Win2K) - http://www.rcis.co.za/dale/tclockex/

Volumouse to adjust volume, free at http://www.snapfiles...m/get/volumouse.html

NOD32 + Outpost Pro 4 (with Anti-SpywareScanner, and Blockpost) + BlockList Manager and blocklists + Zoned Out and IE-SPYAD for ZonedOut, + SysInternals Rootkit Revealer and F-Secure Blacklight Beta - for some safety of a kind.

That will do for now - it's suppertime in Denmark

-My favorite software! What's yours? Curt (January 16, 2007, 11:17 AM)

[rjbull]

Don't overlook New program: Ethervane ActiveHotkeys (freeware)

ActiveHotkeys detects what global keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) are currently registered on the computer by various applications. This helps you determine which hotkeys are in use, and which are still available.

[tomos]

I'm curious how you knew what to delete (I do use Process Explorer but I'm not familiar with Process Monitor).
Also thinking *if* you dont know which process it was that stole the hotkey - surely it will simply start again next time you reboot?