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How to prevent Windows XP from stealing my input Ctrl-Space which is meant for Emacs?

Asked 2008-10-07T15:44:20.527
20

I am learning and using Emacs. What I found annoying is that Ctrl-Space input will be stolen by Windows XP to switch the language bar instead of setting the mark in Emacs. The "language bar" is the native input languages selection such as Chinese keyboard other than English keyboard. Is there a way to temporarily prevent XP from stealing it? I have disabled the language bar from "Regional and language options" from Control Panel but the problem still exists. It doesn't happen on my Windows 2000 desktop at office but it happens on my work Windows XP laptop. Thank you very much.

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24

Found the solution to this problem as I just experienced it. So here goes even if the question is old.

Applies to Windows 7 and maybe others. I had added Chinese, Japanese and Korean input languages as I needed these for some development. After that, I removed them again via Control Panel "Change keyboards...". I removed them all in one go and closed the dialog. After this, all the languages still showed in the Language bar and I had the Ctrl-Space problem.

To fix it, I did the following for each language one at a time:

  1. Open Control Panel applet "Change keyboards..."
  2. Add the keyboard for the language (i.e. chinese)
  3. Click OK and exit control panel
  4. Open applet again and remove the keyboard.

The problem seems to be a bug that appears when removing multiple keyboards at the same time.

answered 2010-03-28T01:24:37.107

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