Repurpose Some Multimedia Keyboard Keys

[ushosp]

I stumbled across something in the Win7 registry. Newer "multimedia" PC keyboards have strange little undersized keys above the function keys. At least three of them can be repurposed, each to run any application of your choice.

Calculator---The native use runs calc.exe but that can be replaced by any other application. In the Registry visit this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey\18

Modify data from "...calc.exe" with a full path to any other .exe.

Identical registry keys ...\15 and ...\7 correspond to email and the browser home page. For those two you must change the name to ShellExecute and the data to any .exe.

The ShellExecute setting is native to ...\18 so it does not need to be changed there. And you can see how it is at that ...\18 location.

Just FYI for people who like to repurpose keys on the keyboard. If an .exe requires an argument you can include that, just as you would when you create a Windows shortcut.