Just bought a new Dell SK-8135 keyboard off of eBay. I have one at work and like it a lot.
It has some buttons on it that are sorta configurable — if you don’t mind poking around in the Windows Registry.
Start -> Run -> regedit
Browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey
- 7 = Browser home button – this will launch the default browser
- 15 = Mail button – this will launch the default mail app.
- 16 = Music note button – this will launch the application associated with the .cda extension. I changed this one to .mp3
- 17 = My Computer button
- 8 = Calculator button
Make your changes, reboot and you’re good to go.
NOTE: I did this in Windows XP. Not sure if this works in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Anyone tried it?
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Hi there. So good so far. How do I get the next track, last track, play and stop symbols to work with my player? XMPlay does have key commands but I need to get these programmed to these keys on the keyboard.
I would imagine that if your media player doesn’t have some sort of keyboard controls, then it won’t work.
Also, the application has to have screen focus for it to work. That’s the way it is with Windows Media Player and iTunes. I have my music button set to open iTunes. All the keys work, but they aren’t global or anything.
Here’s some more programming info.
This keyboard works with Windows Media without focus for me. The whole point of those buttons is to launch/control apps without having to use the mouse. What good is it if you have to use the mouse to gain focus first?
hey, i have this keyboard that you have wrote about above, and i could not find a way of editing the music player recall button. thanx to you and this blog of yours, i have the write music played opening. so all i’m leaving this comment for is: thank you very much! lol i hated hitting that button by accident then having some music play that i didn’t want opening. thank you
For itunes, you can also change the file association to .itl (iTunes Library) – just in case you don’t have mp3 mapped to itunes. Thanks for your post!
4 is the Stop key – I used it to run the ‘lock workstation’ command
holy FRICK
i cant even believed this worked lol, i followed the opening sequence and it practically solved itself. my music key button used to open with WMP, but i downloaded Real player for particular reasons, and the key i assume reassinged itself to Real player. Its been bugging me forever when i want fast music. Most of my music files are in .wma format, so i just swapped the .cda with .wma. rebooted, problem solved. works great thanks alot!
I dumped the calculator icon for
rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation
Which locks the workstation
You could also just press window’s plus l and it will also lock your workstation, lol
I changed button 16 (=Music) from “.cda” to “spotify” and it works great!
Thanks!
Thanks for posting this. I was able to set my music key to open the Pandora One desktop player by creating a new extension (.PandoraOne) and associating it with the player. Then I used this hack to associate the button with the .PandoraOne extension.