How to disable the shape toggle hotkey in Windows Chinese Input method?

Question

In any version of Windows I have used so far (Xp, Vista, 7, 8) and all versions of the MSPY IME (RTM versions and the 2010 version) There is this annoying bug that you cannot change or disable the hotkey for Chinese shape troggle (normal to double spaced chars). The default is Shift+Space, and cannot be changed from the language input settings pane in the control panel. Here are a couple screenshots to show the problem:

After that press Change Key Sequence

This dialog will appear:

Disabling it, has no effect, i.e. Windows will ignore the setting. You will notice I already managed to change the sequence to Shift-None by using the registry, but Windows still uses Shift+Space for shape toggle, which is really annoying when you type Chinese faster (especially if you want to switch between English and Chinese).

Now after you changed or deleted the key with the dialogue, the setting will not be persistent with hitting Apply. Changing the corresponding registry value and rebooting also doesn't help, as the following screenshot demonstrates:

I hope anyone has experience with this problem.

Answer 1

Why can't you change the Shift+Space combination to some unlikely combination like Alt+F12 or whatever ? This is not the same as totally disabling it, but it will liberate at least the space-bar.

As more experimentation, I believe that this key-combination is defined in the registry at :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000011.

Export this registry-key to a .reg file and change the following items :
Key Modifiers to "00 C0 00 00", meaning no "Control" or "Shift" or "Alt".
Virtual Key to 0, meaning "None".

If this does not work, maybe a more forceful action is required, such as totally deleting the 00000011 key. Unfortunately also, this thread claims that Windows will reset these keys as soon as they are changed, which you can verify on your computer,

_{(The above is based on Simplified Chinese MSPY 3.0 IME Hot Key Registry Settings.)}

A reboot is required to be absolutely sure that any such change had an effect.
Create also, as a safety measure, a system quite-point before modifying the registry.

[EDIT]

It seems like Windows will not suffer a change to the above registry keys, so any changes are immediately nullified.

The only working solution is to use AutoHotkey to replace the Shift+Space combination to something else.

One possibility is detailed here : "+Space::Space".
The poster actually used "+Space:: WinActivate".

Answer 2

This bug still exists in Windows 10. In earlier versions of Windows it was possible to disable the shape toggle through the registry, but that seems to have disappeared now.

One very important thing to add to the accepted answer: If you have problems getting Windows to see your change, ensure that you go through the registry and modify other similarly named keys under HKEY_USER. Sometimes Windows seems to use one of these keys instead of the one under HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

For example, I guarantee that the key combination is set to Ctrl+Shift+Alt+PgUp with the following .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000011]
"Key Modifiers"=hex:07,C0,00,00
"Target IME"=hex:00,00,00,00
"Virtual Key"=hex:21,00,00,00

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000011]
"Key Modifiers"=hex:07,C0,00,00
"Target IME"=hex:00,00,00,00
"Virtual Key"=hex:21,00,00,00

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000011]
"Key Modifiers"=hex:07,C0,00,00
"Target IME"=hex:00,00,00,00
"Virtual Key"=hex:21,00,00,00

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-20\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000011]
"Key Modifiers"=hex:07,C0,00,00
"Target IME"=hex:00,00,00,00
"Virtual Key"=hex:21,00,00,00

Answer 3

Somebody made an easy-to-use app based on AutoHotKey that solves this issue even under Windows 10:

https://github.com/Svtter/Kill-Shift-Space

I really feel it was a major design oversight by Microsoft... No idea what they were thinking there.