Wednesday, August 28, 2019

keyboard shortcuts - Alt + Tab (switch windows) and Alt + Shift (switch languanges) stopped working

A couple of days ago, some keyboard hot keys, such as Alt + Tab (switch windows) and Alt + Shift (to switch keyboard input languages) stopped working.


Some notes/considerations:
- If I change "switch input language" hot key to Ctrl + Shift - it works.
- Using right Alt doesn't help.
- I don't remember that I had installed or updated something right before this problem occurred.
- About 5-7 days I moved my system from HDD to SSD drive using Norton Ghost. But hot keys worked for first days after moving the system.
- I tried rebooting in safe mode.
- I tried closing as many processes as possible.
- I tried the AltTabFixer application (which has something to do with fixing invisible always-on-top zero size windows).
- Alt, Shift and Tab keys work ok when used separately.
- I have an up to date antivirus (Avira) working in real-time mode. Disabling it doesn't help also :)
- People in the Internet sometimes advice disabling Aero Theme, it doesn't help me.


This one may be important I think:
- I've tried to connect a PS/2 keyboard (my default one is USB) and after a couple of restarts Alt + Tab was still not working. Then I changed "switch input language" hotkey back to Alt + Shift and language switching and, even more interesting, Alt + Tab started to work! After returning to my default USB keyboard the hotkeys don't work again.

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