Asus notebook keys, v1.3

Asus notebook keys, v1.3
This program gives you ability to define own actions for additional buttons of Asus notebooks.



Package:

• AsusNbKeys.exe - main service module, it must be always loaded (do not close it from Task Manager, use "Stop AsusNbKeys process" button of AsusNbKeysCtrl.exe instead);

• AsusNbKeysCtrl.exe - setup module, manages settings for main service; run it only for making changes to settings.

Features:

• You can set own actions for additional buttons of your Asus notebook or leave them by default;
  Possible own actions:
  • run any application or file (vbs-script, for example) with parameters,
  • simulate keystroke to use it as hotkey with some other program,
  • just do nothing;
  *v1.1: added ability to block all additional buttons by hotkey (Win + Space);
  *v1.3: added ability to supply parameters for app being executed.

Requirements:

• /!\ The Asus's ATK0100 driver + software, HControl.exe MUST be 1043.2.15.64 or newer version;

• Windows XP 32bit or Vista 32Bit;

• Do not change names of programs of this package.

Installation:

• Download and unzip to some safe place;

• Add shortcut for AsusNbKeys.exe to autorun;

• Run AsusNbKeys.exe;

• Run AsusNbKeysCtrl.exe and set up your keys as you want.

Upgrading:

• Run your old AsusNbKeysCtrl.exe and press "Stop AsusNbKeys process" button;

• Close AsusNbKeysCtrl.exe;

• Overwrite AsusNbKeys.exe with newer version;

• Overwrite AsusNbKeysCtrl.exe with newer version;

• Run AsusNbKeys.exe.

Download v1.3: rapidshare.com

Download v1.3 SOURCES: rapidshare.com


PS: please report bugs...

--

Updated to 1.1.
* Block all buttons via Win + Space (enable this option first);
+ Fixed small bug ("Remove" did'n turn off).

Updated to 1.1_FIXED.
* AsusNbKeys.exe does not use msvcr80.dll anymore.

Updated to 1.3.
* Added ability to supply parameters to application being executed;
* Trying to fix Vista errors (the program can get disabled after sleep\hibernate, can't find ATK0100 AC event).

 

Awesome, Thanks.
It works for W3J (managed to change the functionality of the useless keys on the left).

Can I request a new feature ?
-To add a new custom function for the Special key disable/enable feature.
(If you know about the W3J, there is a great possibility that you would press the special buttons on the sides when you want to pick up the laptop from both sides)

 

Anyone else know how good this one is?

 

works fine with the g1s

 

mujtaba, done. Upgrade to 1.1 and enable Fn lock hotkey.

 

Works 100% perfect with M2N. Good job

P.S. Where can I find and download the latest ATK0100 driver? ASUS's ftp is very untidy, I can't find the things I want...

Feature suggestion:

As the program can detect the events by pressing on the hotkey, I believe you can extend the program to get the event id of a third party software (like finding the event id of winamp's play/stop button by clicking on it). This way, we can use the media player keys with Winamp.

 

Excellent !

 

Use keystoke events.

1) Open Winamp and register (for example) Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z as a hotkey for play event;
2) Start AsusNbKeysCtrl and add some new event (power4gear key, for example) and set its action to "keystroke" and set the same keystroke Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z. Save settings.

Now by pressing power4gear key you make system think that you have just pressed Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z. So it works as hotkey for Winamp's play event!

This way you can assign any additional buttons of notebook to act as hotkeys for any programs.

PS: sorry for bad english...

 

NP: Thanks, it works as I wanted

This is a great softare. I think you should put it to a website and put some advertisements on it, so you can make some money of it

 

Nice program! It will definitely add functionality.

 

Tried to use it on a G1S, the main program cannot start (error initializing program)... The Control program starts but (naturally) cannot synchronize with the main program. I have the latest ACPI drivers from Asus, so... I'm open to suggestions ..

 

Michadeon, are you running Vista on your notebook? The program is designed under XP and for XP (I have no Vista to test with). Try to run AsusNbKeys in XP compatibility mode. The "error initializing program" msg tells that this is some system incompatibility.

 

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm running Windows XP SP2, and the nb has been flashed with bios v204. Just for the fun of it, I tried running both programs on my desktop (obviously not an asus), the main program starts, without any obvious effect, and the control cannot find the acpi drivers. On the G1S, the opposite happens: Main program cannot start, control one starts, finds acpi (since there is no regarding error message), but cannot "find" the main program.

 

It will say "Can't find HControl.exe process!" within ~2 minutes after execution and then close.

I can suppose that you're running some antivirus\antispyware\firewall software that tries to get control on AsusNbKeys.exe. My app is written a bit non-standard way (it has no windows, it has no message queue to reduce size of program image in memory). So this all can cause some problems theoretically.
Please try to disable all these programs and try to start AsusNbKeys. Let's see if it's working or not.

 

I don't have any extra software whatsoever... It's a clean XP install that I did yesterday, and so far the only extra program that I have is Winamp. I could try to disable the Windows firewall, but I doubt that this is what's causing the trouble. Thanks for the help, but don't worry, it's not that important for me. Still, I get the feeling that I am the only one with the problem...

 

Michadeon, seems to be that I know what's the problem. Try this rebuilt application: [FILE WAS REMOVED. GET UPDATED VERSION FROM 1ST POST IN THIS THREAD]

 

Hey guys, can I somehow use this program to send Fn+F10/f11/f12 to mute/volume up/volume down? because the asus hotkeys dont do this for some reason on my system
THANKS!

 

dementor, yea. Set these buttons to simulate keystrokes of Volume Mute\Up\Down keys accordingly.

 

Thanks - works perfectly under Vista 32bit!! YOU ROCK!

 

Can you make the turbo gear button have a separate function when fn is held down?

 

Unfortunately, no I have to rewrite whole functionality of Asus's ATK0100 driver in order just to try catch Fn key or read state of some other additional keys of notebook.

 

Dang. Oh Well

 

any thoughts on open sourcing the project?

 

Hehe, thanks for the effort, NP, the main program starts without errors, and I was able to remap every key successfully except for the media control keys (the power button worked flawlessly). The media control buttons (play, pause etc) did not react for your program to recognize them, but I must inform you, that I had to remove the ATKMedia program for Asus yesterday, so I tried your program without that one. I suppose if I reinstall it, everything should work fine... or should the program work without the Asus one?

 

Hey, great job NP !!

A small bug I noticed on my W3J .. When hotkeys are locked (Win + Space), the bluetooth button (on right hand side of the notebook) is still functional. Although the blue icon doesn't appear on the top left of the screen, the bluetooth radio still toggles on and off.

Cheers !

 

I'll share the sources this week. Keep an eye on this topic.

--

My nb has no play\pause\etc buttons to test this bug with.
Btw, my program is fully based on Asus's ATKACPI driver. This driver produces all that events and event codes. I don't know what's the problem.

Haven't u forget to select ("[√] Keystroke:") event for that keys in AsusNbKeysCtrl? They are not set automatically.

Anybody with G1S, please try to bind media control keys and share the results.

--

This is hardware-controlled key. The same thing is for Fn+(F5...F8) keys also.
I can control only software-controlled keys via ATK0100 driver (hardware-controlled key's events are used just to notify sysem of corresponding events).

--
Updated to 1.1_FIXED, see #1. Please upgrade.

--
Anyone having troubles with the program after sleep\hibernate?

 

Yes, the program gets disabled on sleep. I have to kill the process and start it again

 

Please try this version and report what's about the bug: http://rapidshare.com/files/47375105/AsusNbKeys_v1.2.zip

 

Great utility, I am excited to see it. I have a G1S and can confirm that the media keys such as play/stop/ffw/rwd do not capture an event code. The keys at the top left do work however. Power Profile/Mail/Touchpad Control all get an event control.

 

One can suppose that these buttons do work some different way than ATK0100. They won't be accessible to AsusNbKeys...

 

Nevertheless, a great program for anyone wishing to remap the program keys, again great job, NP. Still, I can't understand, how some people can simply control winamp without any additional software...

 

I tried the newer version, I still gets deactivated after hibernation or sleep. But one thing was interesting,I killed the program HControl.exe and restarted it and the AsusNbKeys got activated

 

Is possible to release source code.. maybe someone could help with so good program, like function and so.
I want to ask if is possible to add one function. There is play/pause media buttun on ASUS noteboks. but for example Winamp has different keys for this event, and is not possible to create one global hotkey for play and pause.
So it would be good, if it would be possible to add 2 or more actions to one event and it would make in queue.
I hope it can be done. Thx, and sorry for my bad english

 

For the sources of v1.2 see 1st msg.

The disable-after-sleep bug is not fixed yet.

 

For those who has AsusNbKeys disabled after resume from hibernate, please check version of C:\WINDOWS\ATK0100\HControl.exe. It MUST be 1043.2.15.64 or higher. By now I know that 1043.2.15. 58 makes the bug. Please get updated ATK0100 (is necessary) to meet the requirements of the AsusNbKeys (see 1st post)!

Then I can suppose that AsusNbKeys 1.1_FIXED should work ok. There's no need to use v1.2 (it takes more memory because it has hidden window).

 

Thanks for the heads up !
I will check it ASAP.

 

Thanks !, works great for me.

 

Thanks and added to sticky!

 

Seems to be that these keys are acting as usual multimedia kb's buttons:

// VIRTUAL_KEY_NAME (SCANCODE)
// Description

VK_MEDIA_NEXT_TRACK (B0)
Windows 2000/XP: Next Track key

VK_MEDIA_PREV_TRACK (B1)
Windows 2000/XP: Previous Track key

VK_MEDIA_STOP (B2)
Windows 2000/XP: Stop Media key

VK_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE (B3)
Windows 2000/XP: Play/Pause Media key

U can just try to assign these keys as hotkeys for WinAmp (& etc). Without AsusNbKeys at all.
The same applies to Asus A7M.

 

nevermind...

 

Great software!


European mirror, always handy.

http://www.gnsweb.nl/AsusNbKeys_v1.1_FIXED.zip

 

Great Work!
Works like a charm on an ASUS A3E.
v1.2 with modded ATK 1043.2.15.43 for Winamp keys.
http://www.yunord.net/~dzoolee/HControl_0035.zip
(it is really hard to find this these days!)

Keep up the good work!

 

I tried this software on my VX2s (Vista 32bit). It cannot synchronize with the notebook keys.
In the ATK0100 within the windows folder does not contain anything here. The HCcontrol.exe is located in a folder called "c:\program files\ATK Hotkey".

Is there any chance to make this thing run under vista and these key settings?

 

Jorlin, please add folder "ATK Hotkey" to archive (.zip, .rar, etc) and upload to rapidshare.com, and gimme the link. I have to look with disassembler to that Vista files first to try to make AsusNbKeys work for you.

 

Wow, I think Asus users have been asking for this function for 1-2 years since the last editor thing stopped working.

Thanks a lot Mr. NP_ !!!

 

@NP:
Thanks in advance!
Here is the link ATK_Hotkey.rar
The file contains everything that is included in the folder.

Thanks in advance for having a look - I appreciate your help and efforts. If you can make this work with Vista and this version of ATK, I am sure that a lot of the latest ASUS customers will be very happy ... including me

 

Awsome progrma, im on c90s and it works great on vista x86, just one thing, can you make it possible to edit the execute file option, like when i press my email key I would really like to open gmail in firefox,so it would look like ( C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe "http://mail.google.com/" )for it. I tried linking it to the url shortcut but i didnt seem to work either . so im stuck with a bat file atm which is stupid cause of the CP that always pops up. SO if you can implement that , it would be greatly appreciated, Thanks Again

 

Jorlin, I had a look to that files. Seems to be that everything should work OK. Please do:
1) Check if HControl.exe is running (use Task Manager, processes tab). If it's running then it's OK.
2) Check whether AsusNbKeys.exe is also running. If it's running skip 3 and go to 4.
3) Start AsusNbKeys.exe (*not* AsusNbKeys Ctrl.exe!) and wait for 4 minutes (it can give an error during this period of time). After that check whether AsusNbKeys.exe is also running, it must be running OK now.
4) Start AsusNbKeys Ctrl.exe and make your set up.

That "Can't sync..." error occures if AsusNbKeys is not running while you're trying to add some new event handler via AsusNbKeys Ctrl. I can suppose that you just forgot to start it or it had crashed with some error.

Please report any errors.

--

Nuta, I'll add options line in a day or two (I have lots of things to do now for my boss).

 

Working like a charm. I not sure what the reason was. Maybe I just forgot to run AsusNbKeys
Thanks mate - I am very happy now

 

Problem discovered under windows xp:

Whenever I resume from hibernate/standby the keys will revert to default. The asusnbkeys.exe process will still be running.

It starts working again once I manually start another process of asusnbkeys. The process which uses less memory is the older non-working one which can be killed in windows task manager.

Hope this info can help you fix this problem.