Find originator of a hotkey

Question

How do I find the source of a Windows hotkey / shortcut? I know the keys that start it are Ctrl-Alt-M and I know the program it runs is Windows explorer pointed to the My Documents folder. But how do I find the location of the originator?

I want to find the "source" and remove the hotkey from it so that I can create another one.

We're on fairly secured machines and I won't be able to download any software so I need something native to windows to solve the problem.

I'm on Windows 7 64-bit if that matters.

Answer 1

There is a wmi query in vbs that enumerates all .lnk shortcut files, but it doesn't expose the hotkey property.
The wscript.shell comobject does.
I prefer PowerShell, the following script uses a function found on stackoverflow.com.
It recurses the whole c-drive to find .lnk files and checks if it contains a Hotkey

## Enum-ShortcutHotkeys.ps1
# Function from Tim Lewis https://stackoverflow.com/a/21967566/6811411
function Get-Shortcut {
  param(
    $path = $null
  )
  $obj = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
  if ($path -eq $null) {
    $pathUser = [System.Environment]::GetFolderPath('StartMenu')
    $pathCommon = $obj.SpecialFolders.Item('AllUsersStartMenu')
    $path = dir $pathUser, $pathCommon -Filter *.lnk -Recurse 
  }
  if ($path -is [string]) {$path = dir $path -Filter *.lnk}
  $path | ForEach-Object { 
    if ($_ -is [string]) {$_ = dir $_ -Filter *.lnk}
    if ($_) {
      $link = $obj.CreateShortcut($_.FullName)
      $info = @{}
      $info.Hotkey = $link.Hotkey
      $info.TargetPath = $link.TargetPath
      $info.LinkPath = $link.FullName
      $info.WorkingDirectory = $link.WorkingDirectory
      $info.Arguments = $link.Arguments
      $info.Target = try {Split-Path $info.TargetPath -Leaf } catch { 'n/a'}
      $info.Link = try { Split-Path $info.LinkPath -Leaf } catch { 'n/a'}
      $info.Description = $link.Description
      $info.WindowStyle = $link.WindowStyle
      $info.IconLocation = $link.IconLocation
      New-Object PSObject -Property $info
    }
  }
}
Get-ChildItem -path c:\ -filter *.lnk -rec -force -EA 0|
  ForEach-Object {
    get-shortcut $_.FullName|where Hotkey
  }

This sample output revealed an Acronis hotkey I didn't know off.

> .\Enum-ShortcutHotkeys.ps1

WorkingDirectory : C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\
Link             : Acronis System Report.lnk
TargetPath       : C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\SystemReport.exe
WindowStyle      : 1
Description      : Ermöglicht Ihnen, Informationen über Ihr System zu sammeln.
IconLocation     : ,1
Hotkey           : Ctrl+F7
Target           : SystemReport.exe
Arguments        :
LinkPath         : C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Acronis\True Image\Extras und
                   Werkzeuge\Acronis System Report.lnk

WorkingDirectory : C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\
Link             : Acronis System Report.lnk
TargetPath       : C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\SystemReport.exe
WindowStyle      : 1
Description      : Ermöglicht Ihnen, Informationen über Ihr System zu sammeln.
IconLocation     : ,1
Hotkey           : Ctrl+F7
Target           : SystemReport.exe
Arguments        :
LinkPath         : C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Acronis\True Image\Extras und
                   Werkzeuge\Acronis System Report.lnk