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I'm trying to bind a button on my mouse to one on my keyboard, but the one on my keyboard needs to do nothing except serve as my Ventrilo hotkey. For some weird reason I can't bind things like Shift (unless its a Shift + key kind of thing).

Does anyone know of a key on an average keyboard that does nothing?

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8 Answers 8

Reset to default
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CAPS LOCK

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  • 8
    BUT EVERYONE LOVES CAPS LOCK!
    – jtbandes
    Jul 22, 2009 at 4:06
  • 5
    You spelt Billy Mays wrong.
    – random ♦
    Jul 22, 2009 at 4:23
  • R I P
    – Dennis Williamson
    Jul 22, 2009 at 5:21
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    I disagree that capslock does 'nothing'. It's a way to prevent you from being able to log in after your screensaver activates, forcing you to call into the IT help desk to reset your password since you exceeded the bad login attempts.
    – Darren Hall
    Dec 7, 2009 at 8:23
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Scroll Lock. It's what I use for my Vent key. I've never missed it when doing stuff while chatting in Vent.

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    Its not like Scroll Lock has no use at all... one can use it on Excel to scroll through the document without moving the cell cursor (or whatever it's called). I do agree though that most apps don't seem to have a use for Scroll Lock.
    – Shivasubramanian A
    Jul 22, 2009 at 5:11
  • Scroll Lock and Num Lock have an issue where the PTT binding will break if you press ctrl before or mid-way through due to a backwards functionality feature. Pause/break is similar but less frequent in that it can be activated accidentaly via ctrl+Num/Scrol Lock. --- From wikipedia: > Pressing Ctrl+Scroll Lock performs the same function as pressing Ctrl+Pause/Break. This behavior is a remnant of the original IBM PC keyboards, which did not have a dedicated Pause/Break key. Instead, they assigned the Pause function to Ctrl+Num Lock and the Break function to Ctrl+Scroll Lock.
    – laurencee
    Jan 29, 2023 at 8:42
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Depends on your keyboard. Usually the medium to high F-keys (F13–F16 on my older Apple keyboard) aren't used for much. On Windows keyboards, scroll lock isn't used much. Is there not a way to set Ventrilo to use a mouse button rather than a key?

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  • Awwww man! You beat me by 13 seconds. :)
    – Dan Walker
    Jul 22, 2009 at 4:03
  • "Is there not a way to set Ventrilo to use a mouse button?" Windows can bind mouse buttons 1-5. If I want to bind button 6 or 7 I need to map them to a key on my keyboard.
    – pgs
    Jul 22, 2009 at 4:10
  • It's a Windows limitation? That's interesting... @Dan: sorry! Though considering that my response is 2 or 3 times longer :P
    – jtbandes
    Jul 22, 2009 at 4:20
  • @jtbandes: I always thought it was a windows limitation... but I could be wrong.
    – pgs
    Jul 22, 2009 at 10:34
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    there are more than 12 function keys?
    – RCIX
    Aug 6, 2009 at 1:00
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  • Scroll Lock

  • Pause (though ctrl-pause does do something)

  • Shift+PrintScreen

Though all these keys tend to be piled together in a hard-to-reach area in the keyboard.

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  • Pause is super helpful when playing flash games!
    – Swanand
    Jul 22, 2009 at 5:30
  • Pause does stuff; just open most any decent game and pressing it will pause it.
    – RCIX
    Aug 6, 2009 at 0:58
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F7 - F10 rarely do anything. Or you can try Win+[key].

Opera, for some inexplicable reason, uses F8 by default for selecting the address bar (every other browser and file manager uses F6). One app (KATE I think) uses F10 for word wrap, so I added this to other apps where possible.

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  • F7 - caret browsing in many browsers. F10 goes to the menu bar. And you don't seem to have used any Orthodox File Manager, apparently :-)
    – Joey
    Sep 25, 2009 at 19:00
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I used ~ (which is next to the 1 on my QWERTY board) and it worked fine for Ventrillo while playing World of Warcraft.

However the only annoyance is typing while having to click that button :P You will erase selected text or just have to live with clicking that isn't editable.

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I have a keyboard with several "extra" keys I don't actually use or want, so I'd remap my "Email" or "power off" key to the other purpose.

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Alt Gr is always the first to go on my set ups, usually remapped to standard Alt.

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    Do that on a German keyboard and you can't type "@" any more :/ (not to mention {,[,],} or \ ). Yes, coding is tough here :)
    – Joel in Gö
    Dec 7, 2009 at 12:38

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