My day-job computer is a HP Envy 15. It’s generally speaking a good, fast machine. But it has a couple of serious defects: one is the dreadful battery life, the other is the truly awful addition of a row of “feature” keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard. Using KeyTweak, I was able to disable or re-map all the keys except the Print key. That key sends the standard Windows key combination CTRL+p, and thus cannot be re-mapped because it’s sending two keystrokes rather than one. I’ve lived with this for the past couple of years, but I’m constantly hitting that Print key and opening up modal print dialogs all over the place. It’s particularly galling given the fact that I can’t remember the last time I actually had to print something! More than once I’ve considered simply ripping the key out of the keyboard… Anyway, today I managed to bypass the problem by using Autohotkey:
- Download and install Autohotkey.
- Create a text file in your startup folder called something like disableprint.ahk
- Save the text file with the following content: ^p::return
- The script will run on login and prevent CTRL+p from ever working again…
I realise this is old hat to most folk, but I really struggled to find a straight answer to disabling the Windows print shortcut, hence this post. Perhaps it will help someone else in the same situation.
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
March 27, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Clive Page
Thanks very much for posting that. I’ve recently got a new HP laptop and the print key was a real nuisance, as I kept hitting it in place of the shift. This will make the machine *much* easier to use. I can’t imagine why they designed it with the column of completely superfluous keys, or how the arrangement got through their testing. I suppose none of the testers was a touch-typist with the occasional errant key hit with the left little finger!
March 27, 2011 at 8:34 pm
davidrendall
You’re very welcome, I’m glad my post could help. I too am completely baffled by this insane design decision! Do they even test these products on people? ;)
April 9, 2011 at 9:48 am
Sam
Can i bind this ^P with Left Shit key, i am trying LShift but its not working.
Would you suggest anything?
Also i would love to rebind all the keys:
Print = Left shift
Browser = Caps
Cyber Suite = Tab
Can you please share your .ahk code?
Thanks in advance
April 9, 2011 at 1:35 pm
davidrendall
Hello Sam. I’ll find some way to share the file on Monday – unfortunately the laptop is in the office.
April 11, 2011 at 9:29 am
davidrendall
Now that I’ve refreshed my memory about this, I remember that I tried to get Left Shift to bind to the key, but it wouldn’t work. In the end I gave up and just used the code above to ignore the keystroke. As to the other keys, I didn’t use autohotkey for that, I used Keytweak, which you can download using the link above. I can’t see any way to attach a text file to a worpress.com post, but rest assured that my ahk file just contains the single line I listed above, i.e. ^p::return. HTH.