Tuesday, February 06, 2007

HOWTO turn off sticky keys in windows


I am normally not one to get riled up, but I have to admit that the number of times I've seen the above dialog makes me ready to use words I shouldn't.

We are blessed with every Windows installation having Sticky Keys ready to respond to either a rapid press of the shift key or a long pause on the shift key. If you are anything like me, I often pause in thought with a finger on the shift key. Right now I pause with my finger on the shift and wonder whose decision it was to leave this on by default in Windows? ... On a lighter note, on the name "sticky keys." Isn't that something you would get if you use your keyboard immediately after peeling an especially juicy orange?

To the get dialog above:
Hit shift 5 times
or
Hold shift down for 5 seconds.


To turn it of from the dialog above:

  1. Click Settings
  2. On Keyboard Tab, as seen the dialog below un-select use StickyKeys

  3. Careful you aren't done yet. Click the settings button in the StickyKeys area.
  4. In that dialog un-select all the items.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Click OK once more.
You are now not going to be interrupted while you are paused thinking any more.

Keywords: Windows, StickyKeys off, Turn off StickyKeys, how to Turn off StickyKeys, Stop StickyKeys dialog.

19 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah, turning off Sticky Keys is one of the first things I do when I'm setting up a new Windows system. It's an incredibly irritating feature to say the least.

Anonymous said...

The problem is, this isn't working for me. I HAVE unselected everything and it will still turn itself on - for some reason the notification doesn't even come up anymore.

NOTHING is selected in the 'Sticky Key' feature and yet it still comes on whenever I use the shift key. It's giving me a *u**ing phobia of needing to use shift and it's annoying because I have to edit EVERYTHING I type.
Can someone help with this?

Anonymous said...

I too had this awful problem and now i feel obliged to let the world know how I fixed it-- the problem WAS NOT "sticky keys" - the problem was that I had hit Fn and Number lock. Try doing that again to release number lock.

Anonymous said...

I loove Wikipedia. Easy solution: just press the two shift bars on your keyboard at the same time (excuse my english, i'm french :S)

Hope it'll help someone!

Anonymous said...

Thanks! it is simply the two shift keys you have to press down. My pc was highlighting everything, and the periods were >. Thank you so much! merci beacoup!

Anonymous said...

thank you...I was starting to go crazy trying to even open up the Accessibility Options...lol... it kept selecting all the icons and opening them!

Anonymous said...

Unbelievable... thank you for the tip. you are awesome.

Rev. Benjamin R. Faust said...

Took me forever to get this off too. Not only do you have to unselect "Use Sticky Keys," you have to go into settings and deselect things there too. How stupid. Maybe I'm just too geeky, but I prefer for my computer to NOT try to read my mind and automatically do things it thinks I was about to do. Especially when it's always wrong.

Anonymous said...

it is not working for me...sticky keys will turn on itself...give me another solution...thanks

Anonymous said...

Another quick way to turn it off is hitting "Ctrl" + Backspace.

I realize this post is old, but it came up in a search engine pretty quickly so I see the relevance in still sharing this. BTW, this was done in XP Service Pack 3; not sure if Vista is any different, but I would hope it isn't!

poppy.ox said...

Just press all the keys on the keyboard in frustration, it should work.
That's what just happened with me.
Just be really angry, which is proabably how you're feeling anyway with Sticky Keys on, and hit all the keyboard.
You're most likely to press one of the right buttons to fix it.
Or if you don't want to hit your keyboard, just roll your hand on thekeyboard, pressing all the keys.

Hope this helps, even though it's not very technical.

I tried loads of different technical and fancy ways, and none of them worked.

So, yeah, hopefully, this'll work for you too.

Pure luck really, but oh well.

:D

Anonymous said...

the french person is completely correct it is working all you have to do is hit the two shift keys on your keyboard at the same time. thanks alot. it was making me obligated to completely destroy my computer O.O D:

Anonymous said...

The only thing that worked for me was the ctrl+backspace. Thanks. I could only type caps no matter what I did. It was very frustrating.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! It was the two shift keys! WHen I had sticeykeys on, it wouldn't let me type a period, so I couldn't get to the website I needed for my HW. Thanks so much!

Anonymous said...

Old post, I know.

Sitting on a school public PC right now, I probably shouldn't do it but i'm pretty sure all these machines reset themselves when they reboot anyway.

In any case, I'd like to find who decided to put this "feature" of Windows on by default and kick him right square in the teeth. This is one of the most infuriating things I've ever had to deal with on a computer. Dear f&&&&&& christ how aggravating.

EthanG said...

And now it's on in Linux, by default, without any warning message that it's turned on. Bloody hell.

Anonymous said...

Finally a solution that works!

Who would have thought that in order to turn off Sticky Keys, you need to select "Use Sticky Keys"!?

Could only be Microsoft. :-(

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