Tuesday 28 August 2007

Windows hotkeys bug remedy

In an earlier article I wrote about how to use keyboard key combinations together with vbs scripts to make your life easier. Using windows hotkeys can speed up significantly your daily tasks. In general, using the keyboard rather than the mouse will also help you to avoid repetitive strain inuries, especially if, like me, you work at a computer all day long.

Unfortunately, some people have given up using windows hotkeys, because there is a little bug (in Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP, I haven't tested it in Vista). Today I want to present you a programme (vbs script) that remedies this bug. But let me first describe the bug.

Let's say, you have created a shortcut on your desktop to your favorite program (Internet Explorer?) and assigned the key combination Ctrl+Shift+X to it (x for x-plorer). So now, every time you press Ctrl+Shift+X, Internet Explorer pops up (re-read my blog on shortcuts if you want to know how to create such PC keyboard shortcut keys).
Now let's say, you have become weary of Internet Explorer and you don't need that shortcut anymore. So you delete it and you also empty your Recycle Bin immediately afterwards, because you like to keep your computer clean. So far, so good.
In the meantime, MS Excel has become very important to you. So, naturally, you create a shortcut to Excel on your desktop and you want to assign Ctrl+Shift+X to it (x for x-cel). It won't work. No matter how hard you try, Windows won't accept Ctrl+Shift+X as a hotkey combination anymore. That's the bug.

My solution to this problem is this script: RepairHotkeys. It makes the key combination available again. As always, this is free.

Now, you may wonder what the proper way of deleting a shortcut is. According to Microsoft, you need to "unassign" the key combination (i.e. assign the "space" key) before deleting the shortcut. Not very intuitive, is it?

So now you don't have an excuse anymore, use the hotkeys!


You might want to read my other articles on Windows custom hotkeys

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much! I searched forever to find a fix for this, and you had it.

Anonymous said...

Link to script file is broken...

??

niveauverleih said...

Link fixed.

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to thank you for this script. The problem was a pain - and you provided the pain killer..
Thanks!