Hello everybody.

In my desktop computer I have a Windows 7 x64 partition and I have installed Amarok on it. Up until now I had a simple standard keyboard but today I bought a Sidewinder X4 keyboard which has multimedia keys. They worked out of the box for that windows media player thingie, and after a little tampering they also worked for Winamp but I haven't got the slightest idea about how to make them work for Amarok. I really don't want to use wmp and I installed winamp solely to test out the multimedia keys. I have searched the web extensively but I haven't found anything useful on the subject.

I would love some info or a link to a guide or something so I can make my own script for windows, if that's possible.

Thank you in advance.

They work out of the box for me on Windows. However, it's settings > configure shortcuts to set them manually. (Use the 'global' column.)
How have you installed Amarok? 2.3.2 is pretty old now.

I installed Amarok by using the standard kde installer for windows and selecting the amarok and vlc (i think) packages and a couple more.

After experimenting a bit I found this out:
If I uninstall the software that my keyboard comes with, (its called Microsoft IntelliType) and I let windows download a standard usb keyboard driver then the multimedia keys work fine. This, though, takes away the usefullness of the keyboard because then the macro keys don't work. The reason I still run windows is purely for gaming and this is the reason I bought this keyboard too.

So from what I understand the standard usb keyboard driver has no problem with the integration of the multimedia keys but the IntelliType driver has...

Without that driver active, when configuring the global hotkeys, amarok registers the keystrokes normally as "Media next" and stuff.
With the driver installed it's as if there is no button being pressed and amarok keeps waiting for a key or a key combination to set as a global hotkey...

The driver must be sending different signals from the media keys than the standard; it may be using some sort of direct integration with Windows Media Player which Winamp is capable of picking up. Have a look in the settings or whatever to see if you can change that, but I fear you're out of luck.

If you use the program "xev" does anything happen when you press the macro keys? Also, check in the output of "dmesg" to see if any message relating to "unknown keycodes" is seen.

Isn't xev supposed to be used on an X11 based system? I'm on windows7.

Yes, I looked at the "OS" entry in your profile....

Thank you anyways. I guess I'll try to find a windows alternative.