Fixing the damn HID

In their trademark outstanding attention to detail, Microshaft had seen fit to have an infinite number of variations on your typical Windows install. For my part, I use a version of XP Pro with SP2 and guess what? Although this is the very same version that my parents have, while their HID service started without problems, my service did not.

HID stands for Human Interface Device and is basically Windows' way of recognizing industry standard signals coming from a given keyboard. Have one of those fancy keyboards with media keys like volume up/down, play, stop, etc? That's an HID. And HID Service is what "makes it go."

So on day 2 of running on my G15, I decided it was time to stop goofing off with my macros and start playing with the media keys (which weren't working yesterday). Turns out my HID Service was not running. I found clues on-line what the problem was (not missing files but actually a registry problem. That is, in order for HIDSERV to work, the service keys under your HKey Local Machine registry should look like this:I was missing an entire key under HIDServ. Now for those of you who aren't really into mucking around the registry, it may look like Explorer, but it doesn't quite navigate the same way. Each "directory" is actually a key itself. And mine was missing "Parameters" key under the "HIDServ" key. So you need to right-click in that window and say "new" and "key." In there, you need to create a new "expandable string value" with what you see in my screen capture.

I'm basically repeating info I found on the web but I think a picture is worth a thousand words. Because reading other peoples description of the registry, I had no idea I had to create my "ServiceDll" value inside another "subfolder" I was missing!

Anyway, being that DJ Specs asked so nice, here's a shot of what my work area looks like at the moment. I only now realize after having photographed it, what a frickin' eyesore this mess is! :P