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On Windows 8, I noticed that the keyboard shortcuts for doing stuff is quite centered around the windows key. An example would be win + type, to search/launch applications.

The problem is, that I do not have a Windows key on my keyboard. So is there any way to change these keyboard shortcuts? Preferably to ctrl + alt?

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4
  • You can but it will break other functions using the Win key in Windows 8, some of which are nice.
    – Moab
    Oct 30, 2012 at 20:20
  • Cr-48's don't have a win key so it may well be broken anyways :)
    – Matthew Wong
    Oct 30, 2012 at 20:26
  • As a note, it seems that pressing Ctrl + Esc corresponds to pressing the Win key.
    – Morgan Bengtsson
    Dec 14, 2012 at 21:31
  • I wonder which keyboard in that era doesn't have the Windows/Super/Meta/Command... key?
    – phuclv
    Oct 24, 2018 at 8:01

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
5

Download SharpKeys (also can be found here) and remap a less frequently used key to Win. On an older machine with an otherwise fantastic 101-key PS/2 keyboard (that's 15 years old and going strong!), I used the right Alt key for this purpose, but the choice is yours. Be careful however and don't remap any important keys!

Edit: Similar apps, but personally I've been using SharpKeys for ages over multiple Windows versions, and it just works.

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2
  • When I click the first (official) SharpKeys link you provided I get ESET NOD32 Antivirus - Access denied - Access to the web page was blocked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. The web page is on the list of websites with potentially dangerous content.
    – amiregelz
    Oct 27, 2012 at 22:04
  • @amiregelz: Weird, was fine earlier but now I am getting that message as well. Maybe the domain got hacked/hijacked or something, because otherwise I have been accessing it for years now and can't see the developer knowingly adding malware. Thanks for the heads up though, people should definitely use the second link for now.
    – Karan
    Oct 27, 2012 at 22:43
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You should be able to edit the Scancode Mapping in the registry.
Warning: Extremely difficult.

The scancode for the Windows key is E0 5B.

You can use this utility to generate the registry key.

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1
  • +1 Nice, first time I saw that method, learn something new every day here on SU.
    – Moab
    Oct 30, 2012 at 20:12
2

Make your Caps Lock key trigger the Windows Logo key instead.

  1. save as caps.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout] "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5c,e0,3a,00,00,00,00,00

  1. double click to import into registry

  2. reboot

from: http://mattshaw.org/news/window-map-caps-lock-to-windows-key/

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