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I have a friend who has an Acer Aspire 6930G laptop that came preinstalled with Windows Vista. From day one had the problem that pressing certain keys launched certain applications, i.e. pressing the key A launches Internet Explorer, TAB disables WiFi, etc.

She then got a laptop for work, so she never took the Acer into the shop where she bought it to have the problem fixed. She now stopped working and had to turn in the laptop so I promised to help her get the old laptop working as warranty has now run out on the Acer. As Windows Vista is not an option in my eyes, I installed a fresh install of Windows 7 (not an Acer specific version). Funny thing is that the quick launch still work as they did on Vista, even on a clean Win7 install with no Acer software installed! Having a laptop where you cannot write the letter A without launching IE is quite annoying to say the least :) .. so a solution has to be found.

There is no setting to disable the quick launch keys in registry, so I guess it's part of the keyboard driver Windows auto-installs for the keyboard on the laptop, but I can't find another driver for it to use. Acer has some software called Launch Manager that quick launches applications with certain keys, so tried installing that too, but all I can do is remap the hotkeys to open some other application, not disable them. Have also tried installing a keyboard remapper software but it seems that the acer application/keyboard driver overrules key remap settings written to registry.

Have googled endlessly, called Acer support, etc. but the solution seems nowhere. Can anybody in here help with a solution on how to disable these hot keys? Would be highly appreciated!

Thank you :)

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  • I am willing to bet Acer has software on the PC to disable this. Check programs and features to see if there is quick launch software installed from Acer, you could uninstall it.
    – Moab
    May 17, 2012 at 14:35

2 Answers 2

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As a workaround, just remap all the keys to run c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe. It is designed to run a specific entry point of a specified DLL, but if you don't give it any parameters it just silently exits. There's no popup message or command box, either.

This behaviour is the same on Win2k, WinXP, Vista, Win7, etc.

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  • Thanks :) I'll try that right away - but where? In registry? If yes, where in registry?
    – rassom
    May 17, 2012 at 8:25
  • You mentioned that Launch Manager can remap the keys. Do it from there.
    – Polynomial
    May 17, 2012 at 8:39
  • Nice solution. +1
    – Joe Taylor
    May 17, 2012 at 8:51
  • Ok, did that and it worked for the A key. Great! :-) Forgot to mention though, that Launch Manager doesn't have a setting for the TAB key, so whenever I press TAB, it disables WIFI (imagine typing your e-mail into a login box, then tab to go to password box - poof - no internet connection :) Any ideas on how to fix that?
    – rassom
    May 17, 2012 at 8:56
  • It disables wifi when you press tab? That seems... broken. Are you sure the Fn key isn't held down?
    – Polynomial
    May 17, 2012 at 13:40
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This thread was the second item when I googled "disable nitrosense key", so here is the solution I eventually figured out myself.

Rename the file C:\Program Files\Acer\NitroSense Service\PSAdminAgent.exe to something like PSAdminAgent.exe.disabled. Then reboot. That will prevent the service PSAdminAgent from launching which seems to be what monitors the \N/ key. You can still launch Nitrosense from the Start menu. I looked in services manager but couldn't work out which one it is (it's not the 'Predator' service).

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