Lost Alt-w shortcut

[G.R. Toro]

Hi,

I suddenly seem to have lost use the Alt-w shortcut. It happens (or rather,
nothing happens) in office applications and in other windows applications.
It is not a keyboard failure; I use a laptop and I have the same problem
with the laptop's keyboard and with an external one.

Any suggestions?

Gabriel

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi,

I suddenly seem to have lost use the Alt-w shortcut. It happens (or
rather, nothing happens) in office applications and in other windows
applications. It is not a keyboard failure; I use a laptop and I have the
same problem with the laptop's keyboard and with an external one.

Any suggestions?

Gabriel

Try to go back by using System Restore.

 

[G.R. Toro]

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I do not know how far I should go
back because I noticed the problem a few days ago. Is there a more
problem-specific way to resolve this? Where are these shortcuts
stored/defined?

Thanks,

Gabriel

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

When you said "I suddenly lost . . ." I thought you meant "suddenly",
hence my suggestion . . . By the way: System Restore is fully reversible.
You could go back two weeks, then undo the restoration if you're not
happy with the result.

As a first step I would try to find out if this is a Windows or a hardware
problem, e.g. like so:
1. Click Start / All Programs / Accessories / Accessibility / On-Screen
Keyboard.
This will give you a floating screen keyboard.
2. Launch an application that makes use of Alt+W.
3. Click the Alt key on the floating keyboard.
4. Click "W" on the floating keyboard.
If you get the expected response then you probably have a hardware
problem. If you don't then it's probably a Windows problem.

 

[G.R. Toro]

Thanks again for the good suggestion. It turns out the problem went away
for no clear reason. Although I had re-booted before to see if the problem
disappeared, I had to reboot a couple of times yesterday to uninstall some
old VPN software and re-install a new version. After the
uninstall-reboot-reinstall process, Alt-W was working again. Who knows why!

I would still like to know where these settigs reside and how to change them
if they are ever messed up again.

Gabriel

 

[G.R. Toro]

The problem came back, again for no obvious reason.

Also, I performed the test with the on-screen keyboard and alt-w still does
not work. Thus, it is a problem with windows (as I had suspected).

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Gabriel

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

The problem came back, again for no obvious reason.

Also, I performed the test with the on-screen keyboard and alt-w still
does not work. Thus, it is a problem with windows (as I had suspected).

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Gabriel

You probably have an agent that intercepts the keyboard processing
routine, grabbing Alt+W for itself. Reboot the machine in Safe Mode
and see if the problem persists.