How can I make my keyboard's media keys work when an elevated program has focus?

When I hit my media keys when using Visual Studio 2010 normally, they control Media Player Classic just fine. When I launch VS2010 with elevated privileges, I have to select another program in order for the keys to work. How can I make the media keys work even when I have a program with elevated permissions with focus?

Solution 1:

Depending on what type of keyboard you have there are different supporting applications enabling special features like the media buttons.

Microsoft mice and keyboards use the IPoint and IType applications for this. I have solved the issue with special functions provided by these applications by setting the "Run with highest privilege" on the Windows Task Scheduler activities that are responsible for starting the IPoint and IType applications when a user log in. This way the special features will also be available in admin sessions in Visual Studio.

If your keyboard is from another manufacturer you could probably find the software installed to support your keyboard and try running it with elevated privileges (run as admin) to test it.