Here is, as far as I know, the best way to make Toshiba Laptops' Play/Pause/Stop keys work with iTunes.

iTunes only has limited support for multimedia keys out of the box.  They work only when the iTunes window is activated.  So, here's a plugin one can use to make it work even when minimized.  I found the plugin on the Aqua-Soft Forums site.  You can browse the thread if you want, or just download the plugin: iTunes multimedia keys play pause stop minimized.  Just put it in the C:\Program Files\iTunes\Plug-Ins folder.  (In rare cases, it won't work in this folder - see the thread for more info.)

Next, we need to make the Toshiba multimedia keys work like normal multimedia keys.  For reasons known only to Toshiba, the keys on my laptop have completely different scancode mappings from standard multimedia keys.  Fortunately, on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista, we can remap them.

Here's a registry file I built that solved the problem for me (I use a Toshiba Satellite M70): Toshiba multimedia keys play pause stop.  Just download this to the desktop, and double-click it to run it.  You may wish to back up your registry before doing so, though I have yet to see any issues caused by this.

For more information about scancode mappings, or if the file above didn't work, keep reading...



Some very fine person known only to me as Randy wrote a few articles about key mapping in Windows.  If the above file didn't work, you can remap your multimedia keys manually.

dOWN WITH caps lock WITH kEYBOARD rEMAPPING!

Keyboard Remapping: Part II

And finally, a great little program that Randy himself wrote to facilitate key remapping.  The best part is, the program doesn't need to be running in order for the mapping to work.  All it does is create the registry key, which will work even after the program is uninstalled: SharpKeys keyboard remap.

Well, I hope all this helps.  If anyone with some other laptop uses SharpKeys to remap their multimedia keys, please do send a *.reg file - I'd love to post it.

Cheers, Mango