Winkey stops working

Solution 1:

There is two problem here instead of just one: the first is to remap the Windows Key and the second is to detect and eventually avoid a remapping from a (suspected) software running in your sytem.

A) Remapping the keyboard to default values

The keyboard layout is located in these registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

and they are a bit tricky to change so I suggest you two easy solutions to remap the Windows key to the default value.

1- Microsoft Keyboad Layout Creator

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=22339

or

2- KeyTweak

http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

Both are presented there: Remapping the Keyboard Layout in Windows XP, Vista, and 7

http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/remap-keyboard.htm

I suggest you to try first with KeyTweak because MKLC is a too much "heavy" solution: it create a huge setup file and "lighter" solution is, imho, better...

Just reset the "W key(s)" to their default value...

B) How to find the unwanted "remapper" culprit?

I suggest you to monitor which process is accessing the registry keys related to the keyboard layout with the Sysinternals Process Monitor.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

When you'll find it you'll decide what to do with this "remapper"... [e.g. Recycle bin... ;-)]

Hope this help. Let us know. :)

Solution 2:

I would suggest you get hijackthis and see what applications are loading on startup. After that you should close them from the task manager Ctrl+Shift+Esc one by one and see after each one of them if the win-key returns to its normal behavior. If that doesn't work, try to load windows in safe mode and load each one of the applications on your own and see when the win-key stops functioning as it should.

I believe that after doing that you'll be able to answer both 2) you'll find the program that causes it, and 1) uninstall/re-configure that program to permanently solve it.

Solution 3:

The HKCU in your other comment means its hopefully isolated to your user. I would create a new user and run it for a while to see if it reoccurs, if not just move all your stuff over (A pain, I know)

Solution 4:

The Win key is normally registered as a hotkey by explorer.exe, using the RegisterHotKey API function. You can find out what hotkeys are registered using Hotkey Explorer, although its display is more "user friendly" than I would prefer.

It sounds like it's getting remapped at some level to act like the Favorites key on "internet" keyboards. It can't be too low a level, or Win+M etc. wouldn't still work. In any case, for the Favorites key, this line in Process Monitor is normal:

10:43:11.7233223 PM explorer.exe    1028    RegOpenKey  HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey\6    NAME NOT FOUND  Desired Access: Read

(I'm running XP, YMMV slightly)