Prevent Windows from using a function key

Question

How do I prevent windows from using a function key but allow a specific application to use it?

In my particular case: I have a media player that can be visible on screen or not. I want to use F10 for pause/play. So in my player I setup a global hotkey and that works fine.

The problem is that the current active application(not being media player) gets an "Activate Menu" signal by windows when I press F10. The media player stops, but the application will start the menu browsing process. This distorts any typing I was doing before pressing F10 . How to I prevent windows from doing this but leave F10 working.

Basically I want my media player to have exclusive rights to F10 when it's playing.

Answer 1

I found a way, even if it isn't ideal:

I removed the global hotkeys setting from the media player and used AutoHotKey to redefine F10. It works in this case because the media player supports Media_Play_Pause.

But it's a workaround rather than a real solution.