Some user enabled shortcut keys not working in Windows 8

Question

I like to think of myself as a power user and therefore I setup short cut keys on the keyboard to minimize steps for opening applications.

I have created a keyboard shortcut to a shortcut of a bat file - Ctrl + Alt + S - which connects to a mysql database for a website I administer. For whatever reason Ctrl + Alt + S has stopped working.

Ctrl + Alt + M = local mysql terminal
Ctrl + Alt + R = ruby terminal
Ctrl + Alt + P = python terminal
Ctrl + Alt + G = postresql terminal, no longer working
Ctrl + Alt + N = programmers notepad
Ctrl + Alt + S = opens shortcut of .bat file, no longer working
Ctrl + Alt + K = normal windows command prompt

The above programming languages can also be called through a normal command line as they are on my environment variable path. But I like these things accessible in multiple ways.

What does it mean when a shortcut key stops working all of a sudden? How can I fix it?

Answer 1

I would abandon native shortcuts and reach for AutoHotKey, so you can easily set up hotkeys and actions you never dreamed of before – for example Ctrl+CapsLock to show RGB color under cursor. Check this answer for AHK setup steps.

I would also recommend you using Ctrl+Shift+Alt instead of Ctrl+Alt because the latter are (1) relatively often used inside applications (2) used to produce special chars (Ctrl+Alt is equivalent to Right Alt on nearly any keyboard layout except of standard US. (Even on US international layout.)