Windows shortcut keys open multiple instances?

[ca]

I'm looking for a way to overcome an irritating aspect of windows
shortcut
keys. By "shortcut keys" I'm referring to the provision in a shorcut's
properties that let's you assign a keyboard shortcut, like <ctrl><F12>
or
something similar, to activate the shortcut.

The problem is, hitting the combination of keys on your keyboard does
NOT
have the same effect as double-clicking the shortcut itself. If you
have a
shortcut to notepad, for instance, on your desktop and you double-click
it
once twice, you get two instances of notepad. If you assign a shortcut
key,
however, and then hit the key combination twice, you get one instance
of
notepad. Subsequent uses of the shortcut key only bring the first
instance
into focus.

I'm sure Microsoft considers this a "feature", but I sure don't. I'm
interested in shortcut keys because I want to very quickly open the
applications I use most often, and I use more than one instance of
those
applications at a time.

Thanks.

 

[Thorsten Matzner]

I'm sure Microsoft considers this a "feature", but I sure don't. I'm
interested in shortcut keys because I want to very quickly open the
applications I use most often, and I use more than one instance of
those
applications at a time.

This is by design and I am sure that you cannot change this behaviour.
Maybe there is some software tool that does what you want, but I have
not yet seen a program for this purpose.

 

[David Candy]

There are two types of hotkeys. One sens a message to an application when pressed. The other activates the window a hot key is assigned to.

Explorer registers hotkeys to itself, and when you press it looks what program you want started and starts it with that hotkey now assigned to that window of that application.

 

[Keith Miller MVP]

For notepad, a shortcut with the following target will open multiple instances:

%comspec% /c "start notepad&&exit"

Set the shortcut to run minimized to avoid the command prompt window flash.