"My Computer" keeps opening on its own

G

Grant Barrett

Bit poster
I'm running Windows XP Professional in Parallels 5.0 for Mac OS X (the latest public build) and keep running into these strange circumstances in which:

--When I press certain keys, nothing happens. It's often the letter "e."

--Instead, sometimes "My Computer" opens up, sometimes more than once many times right in a row.

--There are often long delays while it tries to open this window, nothing else can happen during this time.

--Sometimes the Narrator and the other usability functions open up (or did, until I renamed the usability exe so it wouldn't happen).

--Sometimes the computer goes to the session lock screen by itself, where I have to enter my password to get back to my session.

It's as if it thinks it's receiving keyboard commands that it isn't really receiving. I've looked at all the different keyboard shortcuts for the above action. I am definitely *not* pressing those combinations. I also don't believe my keys are sticky at all; at least, they don't behave oddly on the Mac side.

The Windows XP drive passed a full scan from Spybot and from AVG Free (both are up to date, too), which I believe since I'm not going strange Web places on this browser.

I am using the command-pass through of Parallels, in which the typical Mac commands for basic functions are translated in Windows to typical Windows commands. I am using the default "Windows" profile in Parallels's "Keyboard & Mouse" application-wide preferences tab, though I have unchecked mapping the command key to the Windows key.

I am not sharing any apps between OS X and Windows.

Gestures are not enabled.

"Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts" is not enabled, nor is right-clicking using Alt-Cmd + mouse click.

The latest Parallels Tools are installed.

Any ideas?
 
To followup on this (not that anyone has offered any help), but a similar problem is that sometimes Parallels will reverse the function of caps lock. On the Mac side, caps lock is not down and not active. On the Windows side, everything is being typed in all caps. If I hit the caps lock key (and its green LED is active) on the Mac keyboard, then everything I type in Parallels is in lowercase. The shift keys are not stuck on either side. The only way out of this is to save my Parallels session and then resume it, after which all is as it should be.
 
Grant,

I have the same problem with the cap lock key. It drives me nuts with passwords. I have learned that when I open Parallels Desktop, I need to type something in clear text before entering a case sensitive password. Then second guess the caps lock if necessary.

I submitted a problem report, number 5349484 on April 24 and followed up with additional information today on support ticket #913817.

We shall see.

Pete
 
Is your problem solved ? I have the same problem among other keyboard mapping problems.

One solution I found (not perfectly friendly but much better than reopening the session : when this happens, activate caplock in windows, go to Mac OS, deactivate caplock, go back to windows. You should be back in the normal behavior of caplock.
Hope this helps
 
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