g,

I had a keyboard with the media keys on top that were bothering
me and I opened it up, cut the traces and moved on.

:-) I've been thinking of that too. But being able to do that depends on
how the keyboard is build (I've had some which only had a foil sheet, on
which removing a, damped on, track is ... not that easy. Bypassing a key ?
Near to impossible), I though of popping the keys of, removing the stalks
inside and than put them back with a bit of glue along their rims (no ugly
hole, and with the receiving stalks - still pressable - being covered).

Does the key shut you down in safe mode?

Its shuts down as if I would have pushed the power button on the desktop
tower, or as if I had choosen "turn off" on the Alt-F4 "Turn off computer"
dialog.

At least you will kn.ow it is an OS thing.

It does seem to be, as I could, as described, change the response to that
key being pressed from "instantly" to "ask me" (the alt-F4 shutdown dialog)
in the "Control Panel"

My guess is a registry item.

Likely. The whole problem is that I would like to be able to disable just
the keyboard key, /without/ disabeling the power button on the desktop tower
at the same time.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser