how can I disable windows key in c#?

Question

How can i disable or lock windows button?

Answer 1

Using the windows hooks is a lot cleaner than modifying the registry. Additionally, sometimes people have setup personalized scancode maps of their own, and overwriting them is not a very kind thing to do.

To use the windows key hook functions you need to DllImport a couple winapi functions:

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
public static extern IntPtr GetModuleHandle(string lpModuleName);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
public static extern IntPtr SetWindowsHookEx(int idHook, HookHandlerDelegate lpfn, IntPtr hMod, uint dwThreadId);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
public static extern bool UnhookWindowsHookEx(IntPtr hhk);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
public static extern IntPtr CallNextHookEx(IntPtr hhk, int nCode, IntPtr wParam, ref KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT lParam);

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Winapi)]
public static extern short GetKeyState(int keyCode); 

A fairly complete explanation and walkthrough can be found on CodeProject. Here is a direct link to a self contained class file from that example that does everything (To get it to compile clean if you are using WPF will require you to manually reference System.Windows.Forms dll or just changing the 'System.Windows.Forms.Keys' reference to System.Windows.Input.Key should work).

Remember to call UnhookWindowsHookEx() (the class does this in Dispose()) to unhook your captures or people will hate you.