Improve Gaming Experience in PC by Disabling Windows Key
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Windows key often serves as an important shortcut key to perform functions. Some of the shortcut combinations that I quite often use are ‘Win + L’ to lock the PC while I step out and ‘Win + D’ to view the desktop.
But Windows key is a nightmare for PC gamers as windows key lie between some of the most widely used keys for gaming and accidentally pressing the windows key while playing can ruin the gaming experience by jumping out to the desktop and opening the start menu. The best way to avoid this is to disable the windows key.
So, how to disable Windows Key?
1) Goto Start -> Run and Type Regedit and press Enter (In Vista, type Regedit in Search Box under Start)
2) Browse to ‘My Computer\ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Leyboard Layout‘
3) On the right hand side pane, right click and move over ‘NEW‘ and Click ‘Binary Value‘
4) This would have created a new entry with the name ‘New Value #1‘ with Type ‘REG_BINARY‘ and Data as zero-length binary value.
5) Right Click ‘New Value #1′ and rename it to ‘Scancode Map‘
6) Right Click again and click ‘Modify Binary Data’ and enter ‘00000000000000000300000000005BE000005CE000000000‘
7) Close everything and restart your computer.
If for some reason you badly wanted your windows key to work, just delete the new entry you made right now in the registry editor.
[...] Mr Byte has produced a very clear guide to disabling the Windows key on keyboards. If you’re a keen gamer, this guide could prove handy as the Windows Key is right bang in the middle of important gaming keys like CTRL and ALT, so it can be easily pressed. Pretty annoying if you are in the middle of a fire-fight and suddenly your PC switches to the desktop. [...]
Although I’m not a game addict, I ave felt this problem even for small games.
users who do not want to play around with the registry, can use the freeware called WinKey Killer for achieving the same.
Good type. Please make sure that before you change the registry with regedit, you have a backup. See http://www.avirtualexit.com/2007/04/13/how-to-backup-the-windows-registry/ for the required procedure
You are right man , this key can be annoying while playing games , you are about to score a goal and suddenly the whole game minimizes …nice tip .
[...] PC Gaming By Disabling Windows Key Mr Byte has produced a very clear guide to disabling the Windows key on keyboards. If you’re a keen gamer, [...]
thanks for the tip. now I can play peacefully and not be annoyed by the window key.
[...] Free Speech Recognition for Gamers Are you a gamer? Then try out this new feature of speech recognition where you use voice commands to play games and the best of all that is it’s free. Also check out how you can disable windows key to increase performance while gaming. [...]
[...] Improve Gaming Experience in PC by Disabling Windows Key [...]
Hey thanks for the info and stuff, but my concern is at the end of the Binary code I’m wondering if it is suppose to be 10 0’s or 8 0’s.
ok nvm figured it out thanks a lot.
There is a free programming script that allows people to disable or enable the windows keys when they want, without restarting the computer.
http://freescriptsahk.googlepages.com/gamingkeyboardmanager
This does not work in Vista.
In Vista, The modify Binary data gives you an edit box that looks like
0000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0008 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.
.
so you can not type in the value you gave.