autostart

No media key buttons on my keyboard: quick fix

/ chirale / 1 Comment

How to add media key buttons adding customizable shortcuts on a standard keyboard (working example attached).

Not all keyboards have media keys but you can fix this issue adding a global shortcut for your Windows system:

  1. Download and install AutoHotkey
  2. Download the media keys shortcut zip file  and extract on your Desktop
  3. Double click to add the media shortcut to your systray: the shortcut are added
  4. Open your media player and
    1. Tracks
      1. AltGr+Right arrow: Next
      2. AltGr+Alt+Down arrow: Play / Pause
      3. AltGr+Alt+Left: Previous
    2. Volume
      1. AltGr+Shift+Right: Volume Up
      2. AltGr+Shift+Down: Mute
      3. AltGr+Shift+Left: Volume Down
    3. AltGr+Shift+F1: open this howto with the default browser
  5. Alternatively you can use Ctrl+Alt in place of AltGr

Remember to launch the script each time you start the system or to add on automatic execution on start. To do so, Start > Run paste the following:

%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

And then Enter. In the opened folder Right Click > New > Shortcut and paste:

%UserProfile%\Desktop\media_keys_shortcut.ahk

And Next to add the shortcut every time you login.

Download media_keys_shortcut
MD5: 5595F1686DE184A817A0261297003415

You can also read the file as a simple text file with your file editor to add new shortcuts.

See also

Media Keys on superuser

8 steps to speed up slow Windows

/ chirale / 1 Comment

Your system worked well. Then, one day, the startup after login is very slow and you cannot figure out why. There are 4 diagnosis steps and 8 steps to follow to make your PC faster in these cases.

Diagnosis

  1. Windows orb > Search for “event”
  2. Click on “Event viewer”
  3. Take a look to critical and errors
  4. Go to Administrative events and explore errors to look for malfunctioning drivers or applications

How to fix

  1. Download Autoruns for Windows by Microsoft
  2. Extract Autoruns and enter the directory
    1. Right click on Autoruns64.exe (Autoruns.exe on 32 bit systems)
    2. Run as administrator
  3. Click on the Logon tab
  4. Remove check from all entries you think are slowing down the system
  5. Click on Services tab
  6. Remove check from all services you think are slowing down the system: be aware that some services are essential to some applications so if you don’t need them you have to unistall the application to avoid malfunctions
  7. Do not touch the driver tabs! Disabling the wrong driver you can compromise your system
  8. If you have more than one antivirus software, e.g Avira and Microsoft Security Essential update the one you want to keep and uninstall the other in order to avoid conflicts

Disable any application or services you don’t need, uninstall unwanted or malfunctioning applications, restart the system and check the time elapsed after login and the Event viewer.

If you think a USB device is the culprit you can try USB Oblivion to remove unused USB drivers.

Usually you can solve many issues this way but if you haven’t you can try a strongest method using an utility disk.

Tested on:

  • Windows 7