I accidentally turned off hotkeys (so now print screen button won’t work) so I turned the service back on (in “configure desktop”) by hitting “start” but the “print screen” button still won’t work. Any ideas how to get it restarted?
Do you mind telling which desktop, KDE, Gnome, other? Then people who know more about that particular one can concentrate on this problem and others can do other usefull things.
Did you logout / login after the change?
KDE and no I didn’t log out. Thanks, I’ll try that.
UPDATE: Logging out/in doesn’t fix it.
OK, I have openSUSE 11.2 and KDE 4.3.5 here (you realy should try to remember that people like to know those sort of basic data when you ask for help). But I have a translation, thus the wording you see might be a bit different because of my “reversed translating”.
In Kmenu > Configure Desktop I find the General tab and then in Computer management: Keyboard and mouse. Within there I see Standard hotkeys and Global hotkeys. Is it there where you changed things? I ask because i do not see a “Switch off all Hotkeys” thingy nor a “Start” one that you say you “hit”.
Sorry.
- OpenSUSE 11.2
- KDE 4.3.5
Configure Desktop -> (Advanced Tab) -> Service Manager
At the bottom, you’ll find the KHotKeys service.
Yeah! Found it (one learns something new every day).
And I see the “Start” you mean also. Hmpf, never ventured there. I suppose you checked that it is checked and that “active” is shown. I agree with you that when you switch this off and then on, it should work as before. Looks like a bug.
I am afraid we should go for try, error and intelligent guessing. I went to ~.kde4/share/config/ and searched for files with ‘hotk’ (case insensitive) in it. Found kglobalshortcutsrc and khotkeysrc. In both I find references to PrintScreen. Both are some hundreds of lines and a bit to big to post here.
You could use YaST > Security and Users > Users to create a new user. Log in there to create fresh default ~/.kde4/… files. Then you could compare the corresponding files in both $HOME/.kde4/… with e.g. diff. And then comes the intelligent guessing part 
.
HTH
PS. When you think you found it but are not sure, post here first before editing.
PPS. Of course make copies of a file before you go editing, if it becomes worse, just copy back (a bit of a superfluous remark, but better save then sorrow).
Ok, in ~/.kde4/share/config/khotkeysrc:
There were a number of diff’s with uuid’s, I’m leaving those alone.
The only (I believe) relevant diffs:
...line 45...
/* Problem file */
Comment=Basic Konqueror gestures.
DataCount=14
**Enabled=false**
Name=Konqueror Gestures
SystemGroup=0
Type=ACTION_DATA_GROUP
/* OK file */
Comment=Basic Konqueror gestures.
DataCount=14
**Enabled=true**
Name=Konqueror Gestures
SystemGroup=0
Type=ACTION_DATA_GROUP
...line 860...
/* Problem file */
[Data_4]
Comment=This group contains actions that are set up by default.
DataCount=1
**Enabled=false**
Name=Preset Actions
SystemGroup=0
Type=ACTION_DATA_GROUP
/* OK file */
[Data_4]
Comment=This group contains actions that are set up by default.
DataCount=1
**Enabled=true**
Name=Preset Actions
SystemGroup=0
Type=ACTION_DATA_GROUP
Argh! Changing that to true did nothing. And the ref. to PrintScreen key is set to true!
[Data_4_1]
Comment=Launches KSnapShot when PrintScrn is pressed.
Enabled=true
Name=PrintScreen
Type=SIMPLE_ACTION_DATA
BUT, I did find smoething interesting! I have no “kglobalshortcutsrc” file in my current .kde4!!
What should I do? Is there a way to generate this via some KDE GUI?
Well, I got it working again, but in a round-about way. I went to Menu Editor (right click on the kickoff launcher’s icon and select “Menu Editor”). Then I found ksnapshot under
Utilities->Desktop-KSnapshot
Then on the “Advanced Tab”, I clicked to give it a shortcut key and pressed the “PrintScreen” button and now it works!
Still no idea why I couldn’t re-enable all the hot keys by toggling what undid them.
Did you make a test user? And does it also not have a kglobalshortcutsrc?
Strange. Just looked to mine. The timestamp was at the loggin time this morning, thus I guess it is changed "normalY’ at KDE login.
It is 269 lines long. I am willing to spend you a copy. You can find it here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~hcvv/kglobalshortcutsrc
EDIT: you wre justt one minute to early!
And now check what it did to the files we so thouroughly searched. Maybe we learn something 
When you think fit you could file a bug at https://bugs.kde.org/.
Thanks for your help. And it now has all this new stuff:
< [Data_1_2]
< Comment=kde4-ksnapshot.desktop
< Enabled=true
< Name=KSnapshot
< Type=MENUENTRY_SHORTCUT_ACTION_DATA
<
< [Data_1_2Actions]
< ActionsCount=1
<
< [Data_1_2Actions0]
< CommandURL=kde4-ksnapshot.desktop
< Type=MENUENTRY
<
< [Data_1_2Conditions]
< Comment=
< ConditionsCount=0
<
< [Data_1_2Triggers]
< Comment=Simple_action
< TriggersCount=1
<
< [Data_1_2Triggers0]
< Key=Print
< Type=SHORTCUT
< Uuid={0b7ae0bf-7703-4c96-a4d4-7c51b847e143}
You are welcome. I think it is an interesting thread and we both learned from it.
BTW, you could repeat what you did with your testuser, look every time at the file and use that evidence for a bug report. I know it will take sme time. It is up to you.