A small utility that adds an icon to your System Tray to control the Windows key on your keyboard.

Back in the day I used to play a lot of Unreal Tournament and I frequently hit the Windows key whilst in the heat of a tense battle. This caused the game to minimise which always led to my [untimely of course] death! I decided this had to be prevented so I wrote this utility to do just that.

Download: Winkey V1.1

I’m still pretty much of the old school where I use the keyboard almost as much as I use the mouse. Most systems now come with an extended keyboard that includes three Windows keys (two the same either side of the Alt keys and another next to the right Ctrl key). To get the most from your keyboard I’ve documented their function. The first of these keys is called the Windows key and has the following uses:

[Windows] D – Show desktop (toggle)
[Windows] E – Open an explorer window with drives collapsed
[Windows] F – Open the Files Search dialog
[Ctrl][Windows] F – Open the Computers Search dialog
[Windows] M – Minimise all open windows
[Shift][Windows] M – Undo minimise all open windows
[Windows] R – Open the Run dialog
[Windows] U – Open the Utility Manager
[Windows] F1 – Opens Windows help as opposed to help for the current application
[Windows][Break] – Open the System Properties dialog
[Windows][Tab] – Cycle through the taskbar applications

The second key (don’t recall seeing an actual name for this one!) is used to pop up the context menu of the currently selected object and is most useful when your working on a system with no mouse (or one that wasn’t plugged in during bootup!!)

Also handy is that under Windows NT/2000 pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc brings up the Task Manager and pressing Ctrl-Esc under Windows 9x/NT/2000 presents the Start Menu.

For those of you who run certain apps (OK – games!) under Windows 2000 and find that the Start Menu is presented when you accidently press the Windows Key, you may like to download my latest utility. Windows Key Manager is an EXE/DLL combination which installs a low-level keyboard hook that monitors for Windows Key activity. An icon is placed in the System Tray so that the Windows Key may be enabled/disabled at will or the utility be closed.

Getting pretty fed up with Travis Perkins. Late delivery of items is a major pain when I only get to work on the extension at weekends and if they do deliver it they either get it wrong or just dump it on the front lawn.

Although the contact was extremely helpful, the whole company didn’t do me many favours. They were clearly not used to self-build projects.