Make media button on keyboard open Winamp instead of WMP

For the longest time the Media button on my keyboard used to launch Winamp. I don't remember having to do anything to set that up. But suddenly now the button launches stupid Windows Media Player when I press it. I have tried everything I can think of to change it back. Winamp is set to open all the filetypes it can. It is set as my default media player (from Default Programs > Set program access and computer defaults). When I go to Default Programs > Set Default Programs there is only a small list of programs there and Winamp is not one of them and there doesn't seem to be anyway to add or remove programs from that list. I don't no what the point of that silly thing is.

I tried re-installing Winamp. I looked through the Windows Media Player options, nothing there. I considered uninstalling or disabling WMP but that isn't easy and I'm not sure if I want to do that anyway. My keyboard doesn't have any special drivers installed and I can't find any for it, BenQ doesn't support it anymore. It worked fine before without drivers anyway.

So the question is where is the magic place to set what the Media Button does? Something in the registry?

Solution 1:

On Windows 7 (and since Windows ME apparently) these enhanced keyboard keys can be handled directly by Windows using the APPCOMMAND system.

The associations for these keys are stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey.
(It can be overridden, per user, by adding it in HKCU as well I think).

AppKey 16 is the "Media Launcher" key (APPCOMMAND_LAUNCH_MEDIA_SELECT). By default it has an association with .cda (Audio CD's).

So which ever program you have set as the program to handle Audio CD's will be what opens when you hit the Media Launch key.

I have Winamp currently set to control .CDA files (Winamp-->Options-->Preferences-->General Preferences-->File Types), and it opens when I hit the "Music note" key on my Logitech with no additional drivers installed.

Solution 2:

This is the real thing you have to do to make anyprogram be default of media button: Startmenu-> Control Panel-> All Control Panel Items-> Default Program-> Associate a file type of protocol of program -> ... find .cda, click on it and click "Change program..." -> Choose any media program you want like Jetaudio or Winamp -> OK

Then you can instead open your program by pressing media button.