Occasionally I launch a program from Far Manager that takes very long to complete. Normally you can use Ctrl+Alt+Tab to “detach” Far from a running process. Technical note #27 explains this well:

If a long-running process (for example, archiving) was run in a FAR console, and for some reasons this very instance of FAR is needed (an editor in the background) or it is undesirable to run a new instance ofFAR, pressing this key combination will create a new console for FAR where it will continue running as if the process has already ended, and the process will continue working in the old console.

Unfortunately this doesn’t work on Windows 7. Instead of detaching you get Windows task switcher:

Interestingly the switcher is in “sticky” mode. It doesn’t disappear when you release keys. You can use arrow keys to select a window.

The fix is easy:

1. Start regedit, open HKCU\Software\far2\System key.
2. Create ConsoleDetachKey string value, set it to some keyboard shortcut. I use CtrlAltX.
3. Restart Far Manager

To test it try executing this command from Far:

ping google.com -t

Press Ctrl+Alt+X to get back to Far without stopping pings.