Xbox Music ignores Asus FN media keys in Desktop Mode

Question

I have an Asus PRO64JQ laptop, and I recently upgraded to Windows 8. The FN keys stopped working, so I tried to install default drivers using the CD that came with my laptop. Unfortunately, the CD does not support Windows 8.

Asus Support does not help me either. It seems that Asus does not support Windows 8 on my model, since I can't find it in their list of Windows 8 upgradable models. Also, the support page of my laptop does not allow me to select Windows 8 as OS. That's why I'm asking my question here.

I fixed (most of) the FN keys by installing the ATKPackage, and I was happy to find out that the media keys (play/pauze, next, previous) works with the Xbox Music app. But the keys only work in the Metro UI. In Desktop Mode, pressing FN+↓ (play/pause) starts up Windows Media Player.

Disabling Windows Media Player through the control panel stops it from popping up, but Xbox Music still only responds to them in the Metro UI. I remember that I had similar problems when I tried to make these media keys to work with iTunes on Windows 7. The fix there was a small iTunes plug-in.

So tell me, do you know how to fix my problem? Thanks.

Answer 1

The problem is the ATK Media utility provided by Asus is completely locked and instead of emiting keyboard events (like normal media keys), it maps them to specific apps. The order and name of apps that it looks for change depending on version and system, but luckily there's a fix!

I just came across the solution for this after some time reading a bunch of sites.

1. Download the rar package from this blog post: http://3mptylab.blogspot.it/2012/09/how-to-make-asus-notebooks-media-keys.html

2. Stop the current DMedia.exe process.

3. Go to your ATK Media install folder (normally C:\Program Files (x86)\ASUS\ATK Package\ATK Media) and rename DMedia.exe to DMedia.exe.old (just to be safe).

4. Put DMedia.exe you'll find in the RAR into the ATK Media dir. Double click it to run it but it gets run at boot anyway.

5. Check if the media keys work as they should. Grab a beer or watch a movie if it works!

I just tested it in my Asus U30Jc under Win8 Pro 64-bits and works great! This tool actually maps generic keyboard events to the media keys in the integrated keyboard, so they work with any app enabled for this (in some cases like Winamp you might need to enable global keys).