Using the Kde menu editor I have set several keyboard shortcuts to launch terminals, firefox, system monitor, and my e-mail. These particular programs use the windows key plus a second, such as Win+T to launch terminals or Win+W to launch firefox. Unfortunately at random times the windows linked shortcut combinations fail to work. Instead of launching the linked application, which is still linked according to the menu editor, the letter is entered into the active window, assuming there is a space to be entered into.

An alternate binding, such as Alt+T, still works. Right now my terminal shortcut is set to be Win+T or Alt+T, but only Alt+T works. After logging out and back in behavior was restored, but upon the next restart all windows binding was again inactive.

I noticed that whenever this loss of binding occurs, if I go to the menu editor and try to reassign the keybinding, in the hopes of refreshing or relaunching the appropriate service, I cannot assign a Win+T (or any other) binding. Rather, while holding down the Win key that key is shown as "Win+" in the assignment field, but upon pressing the next key, such as T while holding down Win, only T is entered. I have tried logging in and out several times and restarting as well, but to no avail.

Searching the forums I found mention of conflicts with Gnome and some other programs, but the none of the latter are (to my knowledge) installed.

My system is a Dell XPS M1730 running CentOS 5.4, KDE version 3.5.4-25.el5.centos.1 Red Hat. i686, 32-bit.

That is a very old version of KDE. If you are going to continue using the KDE 3 series, please upgrade to KDE 3.5.10. Otherwise, please upgrade to KDE 4.4.4.

I upgraded to 3.5.10-1.el5, no improvement. Also upgraded to CentOs 5.5, the latest version.

Unfortunately I do not know why this occurs, but it seems to be the result of the keyboard layout changing possibly..