43

I can't register a hotkey with a program because "other programs are using it" In this case "Print Screen" and "Ctrl + Print Screen" and every other combination of Shift, Alt, Ctrl, + print-screen.

How can I tell what hotkeys are in use and what programs are using them?

I've seen similar questions:

And they suggest using a program called Hotkey Explorer but that program doens't run correctly on my system (Windows 10 Ent x64).. in fact here is a warning: DO NOT RUN THIS PROGRAM ON WINDOWS 10. What a nightmare.

Also I don't have Dropbox installed (other questions said it might use the print-screen buttons)

Community
  • 1
Aaron
  • 573

5 Answers5

17

Sorry I can't suggest an alternative to Hotkey Explorer for Windows 8 or 10. It's a godsend on Windows 7.

I can only offer you the most primitive way of handling this problem. First, close all your running programs (including stuff in the system tray), one by one. Make notice of what you close and every time (or every once in a while) test if your program (is it Greenshot?) can now use that hotkey.

If everything is closed but the problem persists, open the Processes tab in the Task Manager (or better yet, download the Sysinternals Process Explorer). Sort processes by user and start killing user (not system) processes one by one. Again, keep checking if the hotkey becomes available. Sooner or later you should find the offending process. In my case, CSRHarmonySkypePlugin.exe (part of CSR Harmony drivers for a CSR Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongle) was grabbing Ctrl+Alt+Up and Down and a few others - with no UI to configure that or turn off!

This kind of problem is extremely annoying. Happy hunting!

Gene Pauly
  • 593
15

You can use the tool Spy++ that comes with Visual Studio: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43645062/62838. It will allow you to see what window and process are receiving the WM_HOTKEY window message. If the 32 bit version doesn't work, try the 64 bit version instead.

Fabian Schmied
  • 993
11

A small extension to Gene Pavlovsky's answer: in Sysinternals Process Explorer you can activate Views » Scroll to new processes

Sometimes, the assigned application will be highlighted as soon as you press the hotkey :-)

Tom
  • 279
8

I had the problem that with a Polish keyboard layout the key CTRL+ALT+A (or ALTGr+A) was not working. It should produce the polish letter ą.

I found this site: https://defkey.com/ which has a database for hotkeys. I found that my password manager, KeePass had grabbed that key combination.

Disabling the never used combination solved the issue.

Rüdiger basche
  • 89
7

After having no luck on my Windows 10 system with the Visual Studio or the spy++ github, and with the other answers being abandoned, I was able to find hotkey detective which worked perfectly for me and was able to identify that Akiflow had taken over ctrl+shift+backspace on my system.

You can download the latest release here, extract the zip, and run (as administrator) the version, which is possibly the x86 version, which corresponds to the running app: https://github.com/ITachiLab/hotkey-detective/releases/

Kerridge0
  • 195
  • 1
  • 5