Shortcut Keys stop working without warning

Tech Support Input Device Support
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1

I’m facing an issue where, while I’m using Krita, my mouse-scroll, LMB, Ctrl key etc. stop working. This happens randomly and fixes itself when I reboot my tablet or Krita.

I did search this forum as well as other Discord servers and only made this post as a last resort since, while I found one post that presented a similar issue, it was closed without a solution.

Computer: MSI GF63 Thin 11SC (bought it last week [Oct 2023])
OS: Windows 11
Tablet: Huion Kamvas Pro 13
Krita: version 4.4…8, 5.1.4, 5.2.0 (happened in all)

I updated Windows and my Huion drivers, and I even tried different versions of Krita.

When the freeze happened, I tried out the same functions (scroll-wheeling, Ctrl key etc.) on GIMP and that worked fine. So, the issue is unique to Krita.

I tried moving the USB ports around to see if it’s a loose connection issue (but I’ll be damned if that was it cuz I bought this laptop last week). That wasn’t it.

The one thing that does solve the problem successfully is rebooting Krita or rebooting my tablet, but that’s a lot of hassle, especially when this issue happens every minute or so. It does go away on its own after a while (only to come back later).

The conclusion I came to is that something’s wrong between Krita and my tablet. But I never had any issues on my old PC, so I imagine it could be something to do with Win11 as well? My old PC was a 9+ year-old machine that ran Win10. I used 4.4.8 on it with no issues.

I’m not too tech savvy, so I’d greatly appreciate some help with this matter because it’s impossible to draw when basic functions like zoom and canvas rotation stop working without warning.

2

Welcome to the forum, @Zaid_Hussain. And thanks for including your system info.

Does this happen when you have other apps running in the background and you switch from Krita to another - for instance alt-tab to the browser or Twitch or another social site?

Or is this happening while you are running Krita all by itself?

3

These are Canvas Input actions and there have been problems that other people have noticed.
Please see these three recent topics:

Abnormal canvas rotation and shortcut keys failure

Canvas shortcut keys always fail, 2.0

Canvas Input randomly stops working

It may be caused by another application or utility running. Perhaps some kind of keyboard mapping utility at the system level.

Those topics contain various observations and some solutions for particular cases.

4

Now that you mention it, I believe I always had Edge running behind Krita. And when the break didn’t happen, I was running Krita alone.

It’s 3 in the morning for me so I’ll have to test this later.

But surely it can’t be that volatile of an issue?

5

This thing about Krita not being an active window is intriguing. Though, I’m pretty sure I always made sure Krita was selected before I went back to drawing after getting off my parallel programs.

I’ll test this out and get back to you.

6

@sooz I tried running Krita all by itself but the issue still occurs. So I imagine it’s not a matter of external interference.

I read through the articles @AhabGreybeard linked but all of them have something that triggers the stoppage. In my case, it happens while I’m in the process of drawing. I’ll be sketching, say a torso, then I’d try to zoom out and it wouldn’t work.

I’d also like to add a new development:

Rebooting my tablet no longer solves the issue. All I can do now is either reboot Krita itself or wait for the nonfunctional period to end on its own before continuing drawing. Both options are extremely time consuming.

Is there anything else I can try?

7

It does seem suspicious that it didn’t happen on your previous Win 10 computer.

Did you install the latest Win 11 driver for your Kamvas Pro 13?
If not, try totally uninstalling the tablet driver, restart the PC, install the latest driver then restart the PC then see if the problem is still present.

8

Okay, so, I unintentionally solved the issue.

Well, I didn’t solve it. More like, figured out the root cause.

It’s similar to one of the posts @AhabGreybeard shared, but not quite the same.

The problem:

My tablet’s pen, as is the standard, has two press keys. I’ve mapped these keys to E (Eraser) and RMB (the pen menu).

The problem was that the button mapped to E was dislodging in it’s hole(?) when I pressed it.

All functions that cannot work when the button was held (like RMB [the other pen button] and scroll) would just not work while the button was dislodged.

I tried using the button in Notepad, but it didn’t create a string of EEEE as one would expect when the button is held down.

So it’s more likely that something is loose inside my pen buttons and that looseness keeps toggling (for lack of a better word) itself when I hit the button. It doesn’t always happen, hence why it was hard to track down.

When I press the E key on my keyboard the issue gets resolved with 100% success. With my pen, it’s less consistent. Sometimes a single click solves it. Other times I gotta spam it a bit.

I tried mapping the button to Ctrl+Z instead of E and the issue remains. So it’s not unique to the E key alone.

My solutions:

  1. Spam my pen button until it works again (probably not healthy for the pen).

  2. Bind E to a tablet press key (I’m going with this one. I have two tablet keys I never use and I can bind one of them to E).

  3. Use the E on the keyboard.

Thank you to @sooz and Ahab for helping me out. Even though the matter had nothing to do with background programs, drivers etc., you guys suggesting it allowed me to rule it out as a possibility, making it easier to find the actual cause.

Hope this helps others who have the same issue in the future!

Edit: in the original post, I said LMB. I meant RMB.

9

@Zaid_Hussain I salute your detective work.

10

Great result and good fault finding skills @Zaid_Hussain :slight_smile:

We’ll put you to work investigating many other tricky problems :slight_smile: :slight_smile: