Okay i just installed Litestep and i have the noir 2 theme its been working great but i cant change the volume through my keyboard. My keyboard has a volume up and a volume down button they dont work anymore. When it worked a little box on the right-corner of the screen and volume bars on it, it decrease and increased. Now it stays the same, doesn't go up or down .They worked fine before i installed Litestep. I have XP and the keyboard is a Mircosoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard PS/2

I had the same problem. I never really fixed it... I just settled for this solution: download v_bang.dll from http://www.litestep.com, and set a couple hotkeys for the volume controls. (*Hotkey Ctrl 8 !mute [0], *Hotkey Ctrl 9 !Volume_Down [0], *Hotkey Ctrl 0 !Volume_Up [0]) If you ever figure out how to use your volume buttons, I'd really like to know how! jhoyt@uark.edu

You can use a different hotkey module, I want to say jukeys for some reason, and just assign hotkeys to that button. It sounds like the keyboard drivers, especially since Microsoft wrote them, were built as an addition to Explorer instead of being stand-alone drivers.

also...odds are that the keyboard buttons are controled by software that runs in the background, something that is launched in the registry that litestep isn't hitting. I had that problem with point32.exe With litestep installed it wouldn't load from the registry, so I deleted it from there and stuck it in the startup folder in startmenu/programs/ I think the MS thing is itouch32.exe or something funky like that. But I too have that problem and never thought about it being litestep, I'll look into it now that i know it works in explorer.

If you use shellon you can make a script to load the program at startup if the alternative that AcquaCow mention don't solve the problem.

I suggest you start using jkey.dll as hotkeymodule. Then you can use an app called scankey.exe (which can be found in the utils-section of shellfront.org) and make it "read" the keycode off of the volume-buttons.. then assign names to these keycodes and type them into a file that's shipped with jkey.dll called vk104.txt. Having done that, you assign volume-bangs to your "new" keys and then you're good to go!

Remember to use jkey 0.37, because it lets you use keys without modifiers (ie. Instead of *hotkey WIN NEWVOLUMEKEY !Volume_Up[whatever] you can use *hotkey .none NEWVOLUMEKEY !Volume_Up[whatever]).

hope the short explanation helps.

scankey: http://www.shellfront.org/utils/scankey.zip