Alt-Shift-5 (okay, technically Meta-%) is the Emacs key combo for query-replace. Unfortunately -- though, weirdly, I can't find this documented anywhere -- it also seems to be the Windows key combo for closing a window, which means that on average I can get about half an hour out of Emacs on a Windows box before I forget and kill the shell it's running in. Is there any way to change this, either globally or on a per-application basis?
42 Answers
Do you have a laptop keyboard that overloads the number keys with F1, F2 when you press an additional modifier? That may be your problem. Shift-Alt-5 does not close a window using a default installation of Windows 7.
Note that the "alt" key and function or meta are usually quite distinct, depending on the laptop.
Also check for any of the default garbage "utilities" installed by the laptop vendor that has Keyboard shortcut functionality. Dell used to bundle a Wifi utility that had a bunch of keyboard mappings that conflicted with other things.
1Updated with Fix:Are you using Dexpot? I just found out that Dexpot desktop manager? It has default shortcut keys with "alt + Shift + " [desktop number] that send it to the designated desktop. And sure enough, all of those windows were sent to desktop number 5
Just change Dexpot's shortcut key settings and it should be fixed.
I was having the same issue. I'm using an ASUS laptop and I try using this shortcut for strikethrough in google docs but it's making the windows "invisible".
I thought it was closing the chrome window at first because it cannot be seen anywhere, on any of the windwos desktops...But then I typed the name of a tab in chrome's address bar and it gave the "switch to this tab" option. And viola! The window came back!
I thought maybe it was chrome specific...but it does the same with the File Explorer window.
