Customizing the HP Envy Quick Launch keys

June 13, 2010 View Comments

I bought an envy about a month ago and have been working through the usual new laptop quirks. There are plenty of hard-to-notice-until-bought pros and cons that I might pour over some time, but right now I’d just like to mention my findings with respect to the Envy Quick Launch keys that are located on the left of the keyboard.

By default these keys open up a mail program, HP’s MediaSmart SmartMenu, a web browser, printing, and the Windows calculator program. You can see them on the left side of the keyboard, with labels I’ll explain in a moment:

There’s no way in the HP software to customize the buttons, so I did a little bit of fishing around and found some useful information.

My original intent was to make a small program that would sit in the system tray and simply have a menu to enable/disable all the buttons at will. The buttons are nice, but they aren’t the most useful thing to have enabled when one is trying to play a full-screen game. I’d keep getting sent back to the desktop because I accidentally opened a calculator instead of pressing Ctrl. Similar problems abound with Photoshop, or any program that demands constant use of Tab and Ctrl.

Making a small key-capture program I found out that the first odd-one out was the Print key, which literally just sends the key press for LeftCtrl and P. The second odd one is the wave- looking key, the SmartMenu button, which I’ll address later.

The others had strange key names: BrowserHome, calc.exe, and LaunchMail. At that point I decided to look for those names in the registry and came upon some interesting values:

There are 5 entries in a registry folder corresponding to some of the Quick Launch keys as well as mysterious nonexistant keys. First I’ll mention what the real keys do and how to change them.

Editing the keys

Go to the start bar in Windows 7, type “regedit” and press enter. If you’re unfamiliar with the Windows registry then please be careful, messing with values here can cause a lot of errors.

Navigate to the registry folder:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey

In the folder you’ll see more folders, the three we care about are:

15 calls for the Assocation of ‘mailto’
18 calls for a ShellExecute of ‘calc.exe’
7 calls for the Assocation of ‘http’ (opens the browser or program associated with http)

These are the mail, calculator, and internet buttons respectively. If you want to change them, simply modify the values inside each folder. Associations will open the program that is tied to the protocol or file type. For these two buttons, the ‘mailto’ association opens Windows Live Mail (by default), and the ‘http’ association opens whatever browser is your default. ShellExecute on the other hand is the same as typing something into Run and pressing enter.

An example: Let’s say you want the mail button to open Notepad: Go into the folder named 15, rename “Association” to “ShellExecute”, double click ShellExecute to modify the key’s data and enter “notepad.exe”, replacing “mailto.”

Want to disable a button? Just clear out the ShellExecute or Association data. For the mail button you would double click the Association and replace “mailto” with nothing.

What about the wave key?

The wave-looking key actually opens a program called ‘HP MediaSmart SmartMenu.’ You can uninstall this from Programs and Features in the Control Panel if you wish. I haven’t yet found a way to do anything else with it.

What were those other registry entries?

16 calls for the Assocation of .cda, this seems to be a nonexistant key that was intended to be media-centric
17 calls a ShellExecute on ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}, which is the ParsingName for “My Computer” in Folder Descriptions, so I suppose it was a My Computer button

These keys were probably programmed for but never implemented in the final Envy design.

None of this gives us an easy way to disable the keys temporarily, though, so I guess I’ll have to release a small program later to let people temporarily disable and re-enable them on the fly.

Also, if anyone has any information about the Wireless On/Off key above the “+” key, please let me know. I’d really like to find a way to temporarily disable that, or better yet only make it work when “fn” is pressed, but so far haven’t found anything useful on the key.

envy, hp, laptop

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Written by Jonah_ellinger about 3 months ago.

You change change how the function keys behave with a setting in the bios.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?doc...
Written by Pete Lucas about 2 months ago.

Function keys and the Media keys are different though mate…
Written by Erik about 2 months ago.

I hate those keys. Now, I can finally stop that calculator from popping up when I'm trying for the CTRL key. Thanks!
Written by Erik about 2 months ago.

I run Ubuntu Linux in Virtual Box and the calculator key launches the Ubuntu calculator program, “gcalctool”. I just renamed that program to “calc” and it stops the key from working there too. I guess HP has Linux drivers to enable those keys a different way in Linux.
Written by DLP about 2 months ago.

Can I change the annoying calc button to Ctl somehow?
Written by simonsarris about 2 months ago.

I looked around quite a bit and was unable to find a way to do this :(
Written by xA about 1 month ago.

I use autohotkey to customize the QLBs on my HP laptop. Copied out of the autohotkey help file:

============================
If your keyboard or mouse has a key not listed above, you might still be able to make it a hotkey by using the following steps (requires Windows XP/2000/NT or later):

Ensure that at least one script is running that is using the keyboard hook. You can tell if a script has the keyboard hook by opening its main window and selecting “View->Key history” from the menu bar.
Double-click that script's tray icon to open its main window.
Press one of the “mystery keys” on your keyboard.
Select the menu item “View->Key history”
Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Somewhere near the bottom are the key-down and key-up events for your key. NOTE: Some keys do not generate events and thus will not be visible here. If this is the case, you cannot directly make that particular key a hotkey because your keyboard driver or hardware handles it at a level too low for AutoHotkey to access. For possible solutions, see further below.
If your key is detectible, make a note of the 3-digit hexadecimal value in the second column of the list (e.g. 159).
To define this key as a hotkey, follow this example:
SC159:: ; Replace 159 with your key's value.
MsgBox, %A_ThisHotKey% was pressed.
return
============================

This is the simple script I'm using. It wouldn't be difficult to create a script that toggled various keys on/off in different scenarios.

============================
#InstallKeybdHook
#NoTrayIcon

SC108::run firefox.exe
SC10E::run iTunes.exe
============================
Written by Nonotspam about 1 month ago.

For those who were looking how to remap these keys, checkout SharpKeys (http://www.randyrants.com). It changes the key maps in the registry.

I'm not affiliated with him, but I do find his utility very helpful.
Written by Daniel about 1 month ago.

This post was helpful with the Wave Key. I installed the Key Tweek and it worked. http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Operating-systems-...

Now what I would love to do is to bring back the functionality of the wave key but with an additional key held. Like ctrl-Wave would bring up the originally intended app or something else.
Written by M.Helenek about 3 weeks ago.

Using AutoHotKey, you can change the calc key to a ctrl key. Download AHK. Install. Make new text document, name it “test.ahk.” Right click it. Edit. Type “SC121::Ctrl” in the doc. Save it. Double click it. An icon should show up in your system tray, indicating the script is running.

To remap more keys, double click on the tray icon and a window will appear. Press whatever key you want to remap. On the AHK window, go to View -> Key History and Script Info (Ctrl + K). You will see the Hex code in the 2nd column. Use “SC” + Hex code + 2 colons “::” + New Key to remap your key.

You should see “121″ as the value in the second column when you press the calc key. Thus:

SC121::Ctrl

Remaps that key. Note that the printer key sends 2 key messages, for Ctrl and P. If you remap these keys, you will also remap the normal Ctrl and P. It's best to leave this key alone.

HTH
Written by Jamin about 1 week ago.

I’m sorry to randomly ask this but.
I’ve also been playing computer games, and while those keys annoyed me, using the F1-F8 keys are the most annoying.

I happen to have a computer with similar design to the picture you used.
And while I do find the sound buttons and wireless button useful, the rest I never use and get in the way of my gaming. Pressing F1, for example, does the in-game command AND opens the help window. The Fn button has no control over its little minions up with the Fkeys…

And don’t even get me started on the touchpad. I’d disable it too if I knew how.
Written by Simon about 1 week ago.

There’s most likely settings in the BIOS to disable both of them.

If you don’t know how to get into the BIOS let me know and I’ll explain it.
Written by Jamin about 1 week ago.

You were right Simon.
I searched through all the options and found it in the BIOS settings.
Now my Fn button works accordingly and my touchpad is disabled.
You have my thanks and my subscription. :)

Customizing the HP Envy Quick Launch keys

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