Touch Keyboard and Start Menu Buttons?

[CruciasNZ]

The HP Slate 500 has a keyboard button that on Windows 7 launched the annoying floating keyboard and another which opened the start menu. On Windows 8 it does not do anything, I want to map these buttons so they work again.

Does anyone know the command invoked when you hit the Keyboard Toolbar? Secondly, does anyone know of a good way to map these buttons? The Cnt Alt Del, and Volume buttons work, so I know Windows can see them.

Thanks for your time guys!

 

[stefalopod]

Key tweak is a really good keyboard mapper. It has a semi-automatic setting where you launch keytweak, tell it to learn a key, press the button you want to map and it will give you a code for that particular button. Once you have the button mapped you may be able to map it to a hotkey or something.

I've been trying to remap my LCD/monitor toggle fn button but I haven't figured out how to do the hotkey part yet.

 

[CruciasNZ]

Thanks for that, I'll look into it.

Now does anyone know how to map the keyboard or start menu?

 

[stefalopod]

hmmm… for the start menu you could try plugging in an external keyboard and just pressing the Windows button.
I don't know about launching the keyboard though...

 

[CruciasNZ]

Turns out that that program can see the Volume keys, but not the Home, Keyboard or Cnt Alt Del key (the last of that list works)

 

[stefalopod]

Awww, total bummer. I wonder if there was some driver that got wiped that enabled keyboard and home keys.

I'm just going to file it as "amusing" that a tablet manufacturer built in a hard cntaltdel key... funny.

 

[stefalopod]

Hey, I just stumbled on something and thought of you. Try opening the charms bar, tap search, then type in "tablet" and tapthe settings subfield. You should se an option available that says "Set tablet buttons to perform certain tasks." My tablet doesn't have any tablet buttons so when I click it, it says "No tablet buttons are installed on this device."

Give it a try and see if that works for you.

 

[CruciasNZ]

Good spot, but I get the same error as you.

 

[stefalopod]

It sounds like you may be missing a driver.

If you go to control panel/device manager are there any items that show a little yellow hazard icon and say "unidentified device?"

 

[CruciasNZ]

Just for a Multimedia controller

 

[stefalopod]

It doesn't sound like that would be it.
Try going through your drivers in device manager for any HID, mouse, or keyboard devices, right click, select properties, click the driver tab, and look for generic Microsoft drivers, then see if you can update them to drivers from your manufacturer. If you have a generic driver for something that needs a manufacturer driver that may be what's causing the buttons to be inactive.

It's a good idea to have a mouse or keyboard that you can plug in to your device handy -- I tried to update my touch screen and it hyorked the touch interface so badly I had to load a restore point to fix it.

 

[CruciasNZ]

Problem is nothing seems to indicate that's what they are. I need to find a way to identify which devices are triggered when I push the Volume and Cnt Alt Del key

 

[stefalopod]

Another thought: You could go into device manager and then right click and disable drivers one by one (enabling them again after your rule them out) until one of them makes your volume buttons or Cnt Alt Del button stop functioning. That would identify what's running those buttons at least. Again, you'll want to have some sort of external input device (like a mouse) handy.

The thing is, finding what's operating the volume and cnt alt del buttons won't necessarily tell you what will run your start and keyboard buttons, it's possible that they could be enabled by different devices.

 

[CruciasNZ]

On Windows 7 they were run by the HP Quickstart program, but it doesn't install properly in Win8 (inc compatibility mode).

Well it installs, which activates auto-rotate, but the other keys don't start working and you can't launch it's GUI. I was hoping to just map them to existing buttons, ie Home -> Windows Key

 

[stefalopod]

hmm, you mention that you installed quickstart in compatibility mode, did you also set quickstart GUI to run in compatibility mode?

 

[CruciasNZ]

Yeah, I found this thread which is related

HP Slate 500 - Home and Keyboard Keys Don't Work

God that's a long read

 

[CruciasNZ]

Right so I got the Home Button to work, it minimized everything (which is how you launch the start menu in Windows 7).

"H

KCU\Hewlett-Packard\HP Quick Launch\Event\Bezel Button\8606\Action Name, which is a string containing "Minimize Windows. The keyboard button accesses HKCU\Hewlett-Packard\HP Quick Launch\Event\Bezel Button\8607\Action Name, which is a string containing "Virtual Keyboard". Changing the value of the Action Name makes the button simply do nothing, most likely because I don't know what to change it to that will work."
Right, so I wrote the regKeys it says here and it worked. Now I need to figure out how to change it from Minimize Windows to Window Key.

Keyboard button minimizes the touch keyboard when it's open. So it's faster than aiming my big fat finger for that obnoxiously small X button​

 

[stefalopod]

Hey! Great progress!

Have you tried running keytweak since you got the buttons to work?

 

[CruciasNZ]

It detects the home key now! But when clicking it once it fills both key 1 and key 2 fields in Teach Mode. Progress indeed!

Alright so checking Half Team mode it thinks they Home Key is the B button so that isn't going to work. Now interestingly after I rebooted they Keyboard key worked properly once, then it didn't work again.

I am probably going to have to remap these keys at registry level myself, Atm it's a string value called "ActionName" with value "Virtual Keyboard" or "Minimize Windows". Perhaps I should be thinking to remove these and try and registry program them to be the things I want.

 

[CruciasNZ]

So this is where I have go to

How It Performs

You have to launch the HPMSGSVC program in the HP Quick Launch folder everytime you boot so add it to startup.

Home Key: It minimizes windows, this also launched the start menu in Windows 7 but this does not launch the metro menu (it does launch the Win7 style menu if you disable Metro UI)

Keyboard Key: Launches the Win8 Keyboard the first time, and only the first time it's used after a boot. It will reliably close the keyboard everytime however.

Remapping Via GUI

Now you can download and install KeyTweak, when running this in Teach Mode you can now see and remap these keys. Unfortunately KeyTweak thinks that the Home key is the "B" key, so remapping automatically it doesn't do jack!

Now when using full teach mode I know the keys (scancodes) are as follows:

Volume Up: 57392
Volume Down:57390
Keyboard: <-- I couldn't get this one working in KeyTweak
Home:57435
Cnt Alt Del:57427

Sharpkeys see's the Home Key as the Left Windows key, so that program doesn't work either.

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It's very interesting that the Keyboard button toggles open once, but can toggle closed every time.