The Windows key on your keyboard might be very useful for many, but in fact becomes quite annoying when you are in the middle of some full-screen application and you press it accidentally.

The main purpose of it is to open the the Start menu when pressed. But how many of you really use it? Since I hardly ever use it and annoys me a lot when I accidentally press it while playing Counter-Strike so I decided to disable it from the Windows Registry. Using a small registry hack, you can easily disable or enable it without the need of any third-party tool.

Note: This is a registry hack so don’t attempt this without backing up your Windows registry (How to).

How To Enable/Disable Windows Key (Manual)

Follow the instructions below to disable your Windows key.

1. First, open your Registry Editor (Run > type regedit) and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\KeyBoard Layout

2. In the right pane, look for the key “Scancode Map”. If it doesn’t exist, create a new binary key with the same name.

3. Type its value 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 5B E0 00 00 5C E0 00 00 00 00 and press Enter

That’s it. Your Windows key is disabled and will not work now. To enable it back, delete that value.

Quickly Enable/Disable Windows Key Using Registry Files

If you don’t want to go through all the above steps, you can download the following two registry files to quickly enable and disable your Windows key.

Download:

Enable Windows Key

Disable Windows Key