CTRL + ALT + S in 2021

[back2back4life]

There are about 15 or so Topics with this same problem, and it's frustrating that it's been almost 10 years and HP STILL insists on making 2 GLOBAL shortcuts for their System Information utility. Win + Esc is understandable, but having Ctrl + Alt + S on top of that is an affront to PC users everywhere.

The suggestions range from finding a shortcut file (lnk file) and removing the shortcut key assigned (no longer works on Win 10) to deleting/renaming the System Info executable completely, to disabling the service that controls the rest of the laptop keys.

As of writing, the only solution I can discover is still to rename the System Information executable that opens. Since the file name, location and instructions have changed since almost every single support article was written, hopefully the steps below can help the next person who has to discover what is happening.

This is the service executable that has the shortcut handler registered:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\HP System Event\HPMSGSVC.exe"
It opens this file if it can find it:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\HP System Event\SysInfoEx.exe"
Rename that file and the shortcut handler will no longer open this file. It may fix itself on reboots, but thats a problem I haven't encountered yet.

If neither of these files exist, then open the System Information util, right click the HP icon on the Taskbar, right click the program name (probably "HP System Information" but they like to rename everything) and left click Properties

Navigate to the "Location:" in the "<ExeName>.exe Properties" window, then rename that file to "SysInfoEx-bak.exe" (or whatever the name is now)

Please HP, PLEASE at least let us customize the shortcuts that "HPMSGSVC.exe" listens for, or simply remove the Ctrl + Alt + S shortcut completely since you have the Win + Esc shortcut handler to begin with. It's been almost 10 years since this has been a problem, and not allowing users to customize their machines is terrible.