Develop Reference

How to register pressing F2 on the MC75a in C#?

I'm trying to register a button press of the button F2 on the MC75a hand held terminal by Motorola/Zebra/Symbol. But it doesn't recognise the blue button press which is required to press F2. Any suggestions?

It depends on what is on your form. So if you have a windows form-project and a textbox is focused you could handle the keypress event of this control. If you have no focused controls, set your form to "keypreview = true". You can find this option in the settings of the form editor.
After enabling keypreview you can handle the keypress event from the form. This should work.
If you already enabled keypreview and it does not work, please make a test-form where you can see the keycodes which are send. There is a possibility to remap the keyboard of motorola devices.

Global Key Events in C#

So I want to make a Key_Down and Key_Up event in C#, so that they execute no matter what is selected/tabbed to. Basically I want to make a global key event. Is there a way I can do this? Am I supposed to put it on a form? Because if so, then my comp has a problem.

You need to make the form KeyPreview property set to true. It Gets or sets a value indicating whether the form will receive key events before the event is passed to the control that has focus.
When KeyPreview property is set to true, the form will receive all KeyPress, KeyDown, and KeyUp events. After the form's event handlers have completed processing the keystroke, the keystroke is then assigned to the control with focus.
You can read more about Form.KeyPreview Property

How do I read keyboard input on a Winform?

I've tried using the KeyUp and KeyDown events to read keyboard input but as soon as I place other controls on the Winform, the keys are not read. How do I make sure that the keys are read?

You could set KeyPreview = true on your form to catch keyboard events.
EDITED to let you understand:
private void Form1_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.KeyCode == Keys.A)
e.SuppressKeyPress = true;
}
Stupid sample that receives keyboard events and drop if A was pressed.
If focus is in a textbox, you'll see that text is written, but not A!!
EDITED AGAIN: I took this code from a VB.NET example.
In your usercontrol, use the text box's "Keypress" event to raise a "usercontrol event".
This code would be in your custom usercontrol:
'Declare the event
Event KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)
Private Sub Text1_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)
RaiseEvent KeyPress(KeyAscii)
End Sub

See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.form.keypreview.aspx
set KeyPreview = true and your KeyUp and KeyDown will recognize all keyboard input.

As marco says set KeyPreview to true on your form to catch the key events in the entire form rather than just a control.
Use the KeyPress event ... KeyUp/Down are more for the framework than your code. KeyDown is good if you want to disable a key ... numeric only fields etc. In general KeyPress is the one you're after.
If you want to prevent the keystrokes from propogating to other controls set KeyPressEventArgs.Handled = true.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.keypress(v=VS.90).aspx
Have you wired up the event handler?
MyForm.KeyDown += MyHandler;
You can also do this in the properties pane ... click the event icon ...

If you are looking for your Form itself to read the keyboard input, you already have your answer from other correspondents. I am adding this contribution for the possibility that you might want to add key handling to other controls or user controls on your form. My article Exploring Secrets of .NET Keystroke Handling published on DevX.com (alas, it does require a registration but it is free) gives you a comprehensive discussion on how and why all the various keyhandling hooks and events come into play. Furthermore, the article includes a "Keystroke Sandbox" utility for free download that actually lets you see which controls are receiving which key handling events.
Here is one illustration from the article to whet your appetite:

Keydown event when the form is not active

How can I capture the Keydown event of a form that is not active?
I found references to ProcessKeyDown but I couldn't find any help on that.

Please set KeyPreview of the form to true. First select form and press f4 key, it will open property window and their is KeyPreview and set it to true.

Right cilck on the form and cilck properties, then there will be flash button , it is for events for that object. Find thier Keypress event. just doulbe click on the column corresponding to that event. It will create event for keypress.
For the documentation and help, check this link.

Keypress events are only sent to Controls that have input focus. You can use the Control.HasFocus property to determine whether your Control has focus or not. Use the Control.Focus() method to give your control focus.

You can set a low level keyboard hook using SetWindowsHookEx() to listen for key press events.

If what you want to do is trigger some code in your program upon keys being pressed in the operating system regarding of whether the form is active or not then you can use the method described in this article:
Processing Global Mouse and Keyboard Hooks in C#
Here is a simple example of a program using that library to simulate a virtual mouse by pressing the numeric keys on the numpad.
'1'-'4' and '6'-'9' are directional keys, '5' is left click, '0' is double click.
Program.cs
Form1.cs
Observe that i didn't call the Application.Run(); with a new Form1() parameter so that the application would run but will not be visible on screen. To end the program you have to press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, go to Processes page and end the process manually.

Esc key in Windows Forms application works only with debugger

Is there any way to handle the Esc key event in Windows Forms?
Actually it is working fine when I put debugger in the code. Once I remove the debugger it is not getting fired.
What's the problem here?

If it is for a dialog then you can set the property CancelButton (of the form) to the button that cancels (e.g. named btnCancel and with text "Cancel" in a English language application.)
In this case you don't need to handle the key event for the Esc key.

you should add Form.KeyPreview = true in your Form.Designer.cs. And later you can use Form.KeyPress event.