customize keyboard special keys

[toughwimp11]

I just bought a logitech comfort wave 450. The keyboard has some special keys such as play, volume, home, etc but not stop, or next/prev track. i knew this when i bought it but i used to have a microsoft comfort curve 2000 and the microsoft intellitype let me customize the keys so i could set the home key to be stop, for example. With the comfort wave 450 however, the setpoint software does not recognize the keyboard for some reason. I've tried to download software that can tweak the keys but none of the softare recognize the special keys even though they work when i press them. any suggestions?

 

[mpilchfamily]

Without hacked drivers you won't be able to reassign the keys. Its not something that KB comes stock with. Though the play button should double as the pause/stop button. Thats pretty standard across all Logitech MBs.

 

[toughwimp11]

hmmm, that's an interesting idea. any clue on how to make a driver?

 

[toughwimp11]

but i still don't understand why it's not customizable. if i press the "home" button, it opens firefox. isn't there somewhere in the registry or something of the sort where i can tell it to do the stop action instead of opening firefox?

 

[mpilchfamily]

The home button is programmed to open up the default browser. Its part of the standard drivers for Internet Keyboards like that. There are applications that will allow you to create multi-button shortcuts of your own. You may not be able to reassign the home key but you can use a combination of the Windows key and another key to do or open whatever you want.

You can find out more about it here.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/8

Now there are many keyboards out there that have macro keys that can be programmed to do what your looking for. But they are designed to be reprogrammed like that.

Here is another application that will reasign the keys. But not sure if it will work with the internet and multi media keys.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=613884

 

[postmortemIA]

you can fully customize any key. the windows registry has way to re-map any key to any action.

There's excellent freeware SharpKeys.. it will even figure out custom buttons, you press it and it shows the mapping

http://www.randyrants.com/2008/12/sharpkeys_30.html

no need for for any special drivers.

 

[toughwimp11]

alright, a different question now. for my old keyboard, i used to have a volume bar pop up whenever i changed the volume using the keyboard buttons but now i dont. is there a volume bar i can download for the generic keyboard driver?