How to disable the media buttons on the Aspire 5920
Posted by 
Michael Walsh) on Sep 04 2007 | Tagged as: Aspire 5920, Questons
I received an interesting question from Eoin (Fitzer) and Colin earlier on and thought I’d write a thread about it.
Eoin asked “I would like to reassign the ‘dummy’ bluetooth button…is this possible?”, while Colin wanted to know “is there any way of making the media touch buttons on the right usable with winamp or any other media player than windows media player?”
Well I checked with the Acer support guys and there are two things is something you can do with the media keys: disable them (so you don’t keep accidentally brushing against them when you type) or reinstall them which should allow you to reassign the functionality.
For the first (deactivation), you have to disable the function form the touchpad driver (sorry it’s in Chinese, but I’m sure you can figure out where you have to click).
Then uncheck the item
The media key will be disabled.
If you’re not happy with that, the second solution I have been given is to remove the launch manager and reinstall it by going into Control Panel -> Manage Programs and Applications. You’ll need a reboot but in theory that’ll let you reassign the controls. I don’t have a 5920 available to play with so I can’t vouch for any of these but feel free to play around and see if either one works.
UPDATE 1: I’ve crossed out the reinstall option because I’m not happy recommending it. See my comment below.
UPDATE 2:My man Simone’s being cryptic today, and has asked me to invite 5920 users to install iTunes + Quicktime and see what happens to the Arcade button (top right). Emm, let me know as I’m in the dark.
| 2.5 |
on 05 Sep 2007 at 4:42 pm 1
Jing (Check me out!) said …
I was pretty interested in doing this, but there is a Registry hack circulating around the Acer Notebookreview forums that can be used to remap some of the media keys’ functions.
Those solutions seem pretty scary to try out Michael. It seems strange that you can only remap the keys, by reinstalling the Acer launch Program, and even more inconvenient for day to day use. Perhaps Acer or Synaptics (the company that make these touch controls) can develop more comprehensive software for re-mapping the keys.
Finally, you can tell Simone I have encountered something troubling regarding the Arcade button. When my 5920 is turned off, the button is supposed to act like a Dell Media button, that allows you to play media, such as DVD’s and CD’s without booting the laptop into windows via Acer Arcade.
When I use it, a Windows XP boot screen appears everytime (strange; is this supposed to happen?, cause I don’t like it. It seems like an old version of Acer Arcade has been installed that is reliant on XP, and additional Xp files) then after some time (longer than it takes Vista to boot) Acer Arcade screen appears. It works as it should, but upon exit, I get booted into Vista. Tell me if Im wrong, but isn’t the point of using the Arcade button specifically so I don’t have to boot into Windows?
on 05 Sep 2007 at 7:39 pm 2
Michael Walsh (Check me out!) said …
I’m glad you weighed in on this Jing, I was holding my breath for the longest time there….
I think after all this, until Acer or Symantec come up with another suggestion on how to reprogram the keys, the safest bet is to leave things be, unless you want to simply disable the keys for which the above instructions are just fine.
Apologies all round for jumping ahead of myself.
As far as Arcade is concerned, Simone says the moment he gets his hands on a 5920G he’ll look into the XP thing.
on 05 Sep 2007 at 11:26 pm 3
Colin Welch (Check me out!) said …
the day i bought my acer, i hated the way best buy set it up, so i reformatted, i didnt install any acer e software cuz i hated that too, but installed all the drivers ans stuff. i am able to disable the touch buttons to the right but i would really like to use them with something other than stupid windows media player, also winamp has a button hotkey set thing but it dosnt recognize the media buttons, i did a little registry surfing but still cant find anything to with them. acer made a GREAT product but they messed up with customization in the software hardware integration. also it runs really hot sometimes (like 170 degrees according to speedfan) and ALSO you cant set the fan speed.
on 06 Sep 2007 at 5:00 am 4
Colin Welch (Check me out!) said …
Update: after a little research i found that if i uninstalled the default driver that came from the acer website then reinstalled it, enabled everything in the settings then if u go to the synaptics website and install the newest driver from them the media buttons work worth winamp. ahhh, problem solved, super happy now, lol, all they were good for was pretty blue light but now i think my laptop is awesome.
on 06 Sep 2007 at 10:38 am 5
Michael Walsh (Check me out!) said …
Hey Colin,
I’m glad someone figured it out. Maybe I should add a 1, 2, 3 procedure to the main post so that anyone else who visits this post can see it. Thanks!
on 06 Sep 2007 at 4:14 pm 6
Michael Walsh (Check me out!) said …
Jing,
Word back from Simone regarding Arcade (he got a 5920G). I can follow it up to a point, then you’re going to have to explain it to me
How did he do?
on 07 Sep 2007 at 10:08 am 7
Troy (Check me out!) said …
Thanks for the info guys, you really know your stuff! I have a question concerning the HDMI output. I tried connecting my 5920 to my Samsung 32″ HD TV and have found that there is no sound. The picture quality is great (especially for playing Bioshock!) but the sound is still pumping through the laptop and not the TV. Any ideas?
on 07 Sep 2007 at 12:19 pm 8
Michael Walsh (Check me out!) said …
Hey Troy,
Great question! Have a look at the post it generated
on 07 Sep 2007 at 3:15 pm 9
Jing (Check me out!) said …
Hey Michael, tell Simone he was exactly right, and all the information provided was useful. Acer Arcade Instant-On work.
Basically, everytime I tried to exit the Acer Arcade, the laptop would sound like it was powering off, only to boot up again, and load Windows.
From what Simone said, when I exited Acer Arcade Instant-On, it should be hibernating, then turn itself off. However, it wasn’t.
I then had an idea, instead of exiting, I pressed the Power button whilst within Acer Arcade. Success! A message appeared on-screen saying I was entering Hibernation, after which the laptop turned off. I tried pressing the Acer Arcade button after the laptop turned off, and a progress bar quickly appeared, with the words “resuming from standby” (or something like that) and loaded Acer arcade in about 10-15 seconds flat.
No XP boot screen anymore.
Something that annoys me though is the fact Windows XP needs to be installed. As well as wasting precious space, why can’t Vista be used? (e.g. what does XP have that vista can’t use to load Acer Arcade?) So when the next Windows Vienna comes out in a few years, will Vista have to be installed to boot up Acer Arcade?
on 12 Sep 2007 at 11:24 am 10
Chris (Check me out!) said …
As a side question, can the 5920 be made actually boot into XP proper? Might be useful for people with Vista compatibility problems with software.
on 12 Sep 2007 at 6:22 pm 11
Michael Walsh (Check me out!) said …
Hi Chris,
Apparently it can. Simone’s working on a step-by-step guide that I’ll post the moment (if and when) he sends it through…
on 24 Oct 2007 at 3:15 am 12
Maikeru (Check me out!) said …
hi guys!
i have recently bought an Aspire 4920G notebook.
i have been problems with the MediaTouch keys.
The first time i used the notebook, the record button was working (without the red light indicator) and whenever i press the media keys, they would cause the unit to beep. after a few days, i noticed that the record key had its lights on, and on certain occassions it was off. And the media keys no longer gave off any beep when press.
its really frustrating.
Another problem i have is with the touchpad. i reinstalled the driver / software a few days ago. after a while using it, i noticed that the omni-directional keys in-between the right/left buttons performed left clicks instead of the horz/vert scroll function. i was pretty sure i got the touchpad drivers for the 4920g model.
Lastly, does anyone here experience the same Vista Pause problem? coming from sleep mode, the system would just suddenly go blank after a few minutes of using it. and then you have to power it off and back on again so you could use it.
I’m starting to really hate this unit. but i know it has a lot of potential. are the acer guys aware of these problems / bugs?
hope you guys could help me out. THanks!
on 03 Nov 2007 at 11:33 pm 13
Tom (Check me out!) said …
Re: mediatouch keys with winamp
I was able to get them to work, it was accident really, I use a great program called “cd art display” to show my album art with winamp. Just go to
http://www.closetosoftware.com/?s=cdartdisplay
then in the options of the program tell it to “use multimedia keyboard” works well for me.
maikeru: I also had the same Vista pause problem, it went away for me after I severely changed around the sleep/power management settings. I haven’t had any problems since then.
on 25 Jul 2008 at 3:30 pm 14
mike (Check me out!) said …
i was playing around with the settings on my acer 5920g and i deactivated the media buttons on the right of the keyboard, but i have now forgotten how to reactivate them.
please could someone help.
on 26 Jul 2008 at 8:17 am 15
Morris Lee (Check me out!) said …
double click on the synaptics icon on the bottom right corner(if it is not there, right click on desktop -> personalize -> mouse pointers) Navigate to Acer Media touch, check the very first check box on that page. if the Acer Media Touch tab is not present, uninstall the current synapptics driver, then install the one from eRecovery Manager, or download it from Acer driver support page for aspire 5920