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I use a third party extension to Windows Explorer (in Windows 8.1) called QTTabBar. In this screenshot you can see how by default there is a huge number of custom keyboard shortcuts activated by it, and I assume these are 'loaded' into Windows Explorer, the registry, or the system memory in some sort of way as a result.
There's already dozens of other hotkeys for the system to watch out for such as my many AutoHotkey scripts, on top of Windows' default shortcuts themselves.
Would turning off these excessive shortcuts (which I don't use), actually speed things up at all? Or, to put it another way - does having them 'on' slow down Windows at all? Is it like browser extensions slowing down browsers in any way?
Or would there not make a difference between 1 or 200 shortcuts ticked in QTTabBar, and to increase performance I would have to turn off the app altogether?
If it's relevant to the question, it would be helpful to know how (third-party) keyboard shortcuts actually use up system resources in Windows - whether it's a constant on-the-fly memory allocation depending on what programs are open or what window is focused on and what hotkeys it's telling Windows to honour, or whether it's more of a static interaction with Windows such as registry entries recorded by the program in question.
I can tell you the skinny about in-program shortcuts, but once you throw in programs such as AutoHotkey things get a bit unpredictable. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2013-11-12T07:44:33.933