Occasionally, keyboard presses get stuck to only Windows shortcuts

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Occasionally, keyboard presses get stuck to only Windows shortcuts

Breyana 0

Occasionally, when I interact with a Windows shortcut, my keyboard gets stuck to only pressing Windows shortcuts and I can no longer type text. This happens often enough to be a problem, but I cannot seem to get it to happen consistently. I tried changing keyboards, and all of my accessibility options are turned off.

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Answer 1

Francisco Montilla 23,935 Independent Advisor

Hello,

Because it happens with different keyboards and your accessibility features are off, the most likely cause is a background app or driver that occasionally leaves the Windows key logically held down. The best single next step is to perform a Clean Boot to isolate the culprit.

Press Start and type System Configuration, then press Enter. In System Configuration select the Services tab, check Hide all Microsoft services, then click Disable all.

Go to the Startup tab and click Open Task Manager. In Task Manager disable every startup item, close Task Manager, click OK in System Configuration, and restart.

Use the PC as you normally would. If the problem does not return, re enable items in batches to find which one brings the issue back. Once you identify it, leave it disabled or uninstall or update it from Settings - Apps. When you are done, open System Configuration again and set Normal startup on the General tab so everything else runs as usual.

Tell me what you find and I will help you decide the safest way to remove or update the specific component.

Breyana 0 Reputation points

2025-12-04T21:32:19.5433333+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, the problem is I can't 100% reproduce the issue, so I won't know if disabling any of these services will help. If I knew how to trigger this issue, testing this would be a breeze. I tried retracing my steps to make it happen on command, and nothing I do consistently brings it up. (I've been a QA Engineer for over a decade, so trust me I've attempted to reproduce this)
Francisco Montilla 23,935 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2025-12-05T09:07:12.6533333+00:00
Got it. Please try to instrument the Win key itself so you can both reproduce the symptom on demand and automatically break out of it when it occurs.

Do this with a tiny open source AutoHotkey v2 script that detects when Windows thinks LWin or RWin is logically held while the physical key is not. It will log the event with timestamps and immediately send a release so you can type again. That gives you a breadcrumb to correlate with whatever app or driver had focus at that moment.

Install AutoHotkey v2 from its official site. Create a new text file named WinKeyWatch.ahk on your desktop, paste the code below, save it and double click to run. Leave it running while you work as usual.

When the issue happens, the script will free the stuck state within a few milliseconds and append a line to WinKeyWatch.log in the same folder. Open the log after the next incident and note the timestamp and what was on screen at that exact second. If you want to stop the script later, right click the green H icon in the tray and exit.

; WinKeyWatch.ahk ; Requires: AutoHotkey v2 #Requires AutoHotkey v2.0 log := A_ScriptDir "\WinKeyWatch.log" SetTimer(CheckWinKey, 50) CheckWinKey() { static shown := false lLog := GetKeyState("LWin") ; logical rLog := GetKeyState("RWin") ; logical lPhys := GetKeyState("LWin", "P") ; physical rPhys := GetKeyState("RWin", "P") ; physical if ((lLog || rLog) && !lPhys && !rPhys) { if !shown { shown := true FileAppend(Format("{1} - Detected stuck Win. lLog={2} rLog={3} lPhys={4} rPhys={5}`n" , FormatTime(A_Now, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.###"), lLog, rLog, lPhys, rPhys), log) ToolTip("Win key stuck. Releasing...") } Send "{LWin up}" Send "{RWin up}" } else if (shown && !lLog && !rLog) { shown := false ToolTip() FileAppend(Format("{1} - Win released`n", FormatTime(A_Now, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.###")), log) } } ^!w::Run(log) ; Ctrl+Alt+W opens the log quickly

After you get one or two entries, tell me the exact timestamps and what was active at that moment. I will help you map that to the responsible process and the clean way to update or remove it.

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Occasionally, keyboard presses get stuck to only Windows shortcuts

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