Keyboard hook only working in the calling process

I am doing a VoIP program where I use keyboard hook to check push-to-talk button is pressed down. It works locally 开发者_Go百科from the process which installs the hook, but my aim is to have it check all global input too. Here's what I use:

SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD,hook_hookproc,hookInst,0);

According to MSDN and other sources, I need to inject my hooking dll into all other processes... which would be painful, and I doubt ventrilo/teamspeak etc does that. Is it possible to inject it unto the system process, and then all child processes (everything) inherit the hook call that way? Or do you HAVE to inject it into every single process?

cheers

A global hook like WH_KEYBOARD indeed requires a DLL that can be injected. You typically have to add some IPC code to tell somebody else about it. Beware that you are crossing a process boundary doing this so you need something like a pipe to talk.

Have you considered using a low-level keyboard hook (WH_KEYBOARD_LL). It doesn't require an injectable DLL, Windows switches context to your process to call the hook. It is almost always good enough to detect a specific keystroke, perhaps combined with GetAsyncKeyState() to check for modifier keys.

A hotkey registered with RegisterHotKey() could perhaps work as well. It should be your first choice since it has much less impact on the machine.