Although they are usually extremely useful, the WinKey+X hotkeys can get irritating. Sometimes, the Windows key becomes buggy and they create more problems than you care for. Furthermore, some people do not even use the shortcuts for their intended purposes and they want to free them so that they can be used for other purposes. Although some of them can be disabled individually, you will have to actually disable the whole feature most of the time. Both the methods outlined below will need you to restart or log off in order to take effect.
Local Group Policies
This is the easiest way to do it but it requires Professional or higher versions of Windows. If you are using one, then you are in luck. To open the Local Group Policies, press WinKey to bring up the Start menu, type in gpedit.msc and press Enter. Then, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer. Scroll down the list till you find an entry that says “Turn off Windows+X hotkeys”. Double click on that and change the status from “Not configured” to “Enabled”. Press OK and you are done.
Registry Editor
For those with Home versions of Windows, you will have to do a bit of Registry hacking. Press the WinKey, type in regedit and press Enter. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Right click on an empty space in the right side panel, and choose New > DWORD (32-bit) value. Name that NoWinKeys, double click on it and change the value to 1.
