How can I disable screen shortcuts in Windows 7?

Question

Is there any way to disable screen shortcuts such as Ctrl+Alt+[F1..F4] in Windows 7?

Do you remember where did you enabled it? Im asking because it is not enabled by default on my Windows 7. Ctrl+alt+F1 or F2 resulted in nothing here... — Diogo, Apr 10 '12 at 12:40
It will result - if you add second monitor! And sometimes it makes me crazy. :( Cause I have same hotkeys in virtualbox, that I use often. — Nikolay Fominyh, Apr 10 '12 at 12:44
Hmm, now I understand you... But in this case wouldn't be better to change Virtualbox's hotkeys? — Diogo, Apr 10 '12 at 12:45
Did you install some kind of software like ultramon or desktops from sysinternals? I have multiple screens and my ctrl+alt+f1-f4 do nothing. — Phillip R., Apr 10 '12 at 12:54
@DiogoRocha, yep, that's the answer I hear from windows users. "It confuses you to do something? Don't do something!".. — Nikolay Fominyh, Apr 12 '12 at 09:26
I've improved my answer. Hopefully it will be useful to you. If so, please accept it. Thx. — user 99572 is fine, Mar 09 '13 at 21:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

There is no native way to disable hotkeys in Windows 7. (By the way: The shortcuts you mention are not default hotkeys by Windows 7.)

You can however use AutoHotkey to disable almost any keyboard shortcut. There are other utilities for this, but AutoHotkey is my weapon of choice.

You can disable the hotkeys mentioned here with the following code:

^!F1::return ; disables Ctrl-Alt-F1
^!F2::return ; disables Ctrl-Alt-F2
^!F3::return ; disables Ctrl-Alt-F3
^!F4::return ; disables Ctrl-Alt-F4

Just paste the code into an AutoHotkey script that you launch at startup and the keys will be permanently disabled.

If you want to reassign the hotkeys to something else, you can do as follows:

^!F1::Send ^{Enter] ; sends Control-Enter when pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1
^!F2::some boilerplate text ; types phrases

I happen to have provided an answer to a similar question: How do you disable hotkeys in Internet Explorer 9?

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 04 '14 at 19:12

Similar thing happened to me. I happen to have an Intel display card.

There's an Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel that allows "Hot Key Functionality" to change various aspects of the display. One of the default hot keys is Ctrl-Alt-F1.

To access that control panel right-click on your desktop and choose "Graphics Properties..."
On the left select "Options and Support".
On the right you'll see those hotkeys.
You can disable them by unchecking the Enable checkbox at the top.

How can I disable screen shortcuts in Windows 7?

2 Answers2