It can disable the shift key entirely, with a low-level keyboard hook, but of course that can only work for games that don't use the key- this is what is used for the Windows Key in some games, for example.
Interesting.... I have noticed that some games the windows key doesnt function to get back to desktop. Never thought that the game devs disabled it intentionally.
Thinking now it was probably disabled to avoid crash conditions. One such game that the windows key does not work in to get back to Windows desktop is Driver - Parallel Lines. I had an awesome game going and I paused the game and wanted to fire up fraps to record an insane car chase where I was having a bunch of fun with AI/NPC Cops. I was going to double back over an area in the game that i knew I could get an insane jump out of and land it back onto its wheels and keep going. Sadly windows key didnt function to get me back to Windows desktop to turn fraps on. So I had to exit the game, turn fraps on, and then launch the game and then navigate all the way back on the map to where I was that i wanted to do the stunt recording to record it in which then the tilde key worked to start/stop recording for fraps.
Interesting crash with Just Cause 3 and Virtual Memory disabled. I too what have thought that 32GB is plenty and to force it to all work within RAM vs Disk Swapping data would be a performance gain of not having up to 48GB of swap space for 32GB RAM. Somewhere I was reading, cant find the article now, but that disabling swap space and forcing it to all run in RAM detracts from Windows performance because Windows wants to use Virtual Memory, so its actually being crippled by it disabled.
I had one system that was acting strange on me ( suspected SSD issues and with SSD issues serving back data to RAM improperly it was causing system crashes ) and I lowered the swap space to the bare minimum since it wouldnt allow it to be disabled completely so it was set to the 2-4mb for C: forcing it to run on mainly just RAM and a 4mb area of the SSD. The system behaved with this setting so I then knew it was a issue with my SSD. However Windows 7 64-bit was not as responsive as it was with virtual memory enabled. Sure it had only 4GB RAM, but with just the OS and Firefox browser, I did sense some lag to the system. The processor is a Sempron 3850 1.3Ghz quadcore and so to begin with the system isnt all that powerful, so crippling virtual memory on a system that was sort of crippled by design to be an electron sipper, it stood out as a performance loss on this system whereas a more powerful computer might not be as easily noticed.
One thing I havent tried yet is to see if I can set up a RAM Drive and have Windows pointed to the RAM Drive for its swap space. It would then force Windows to work in RAM and it would be happy with its swap space that by design I guess it works better with swap/virtual memory space enabled vs crippled/disabled. I havent done this yet because on a 4GB RAM system it wouldnt work out too well. I have a system with 16GB RAM though and that would make for an interesting test. Of 16GB I could have allocated 6GB RAM for system and 10GB RAM DRIVE for very fast swap space. Perform a baseline benchmark prior to this and then one after to see if there is any real gain. The only unknown that I have is.... the chicken or the egg coming first scenario. That is.... the RAM Drive would need to be available for Windows 7 to use for swap/virtual memory and would Windows 7 be happy with the swap space not being active until the RAM Drive service is started. I am thinking Windows 7 is going to have a fit upon reboot when the RAM Drive service is not active yet to give Windows 7 its virtual memory within RAM. * Its also kind of funny that its a mess of using RAM to help itself.
But Windows was designed to run on systems that didnt have a massive amount of RAM, and so Virtual Memory is deep in the root of its design to make the OS work without running out of memory.
The system with the SSD issue with virtual memory, I have since installed a HDD and the crash conditions have been far fewer than with the SSD. Also set the virtual memory back to system managed size.
Im kind of surprised that your system crashed running out of RAM. Recently on my older system with 4GB RAM, I have been getting low memory warnings when I have Windows 7 64-bit running Firefox active and Firestorm Viewer for playing around in a virtual world on Second Life. The low memory warnings suggest to shut off firefox. I skip past the low memory warnings that pop up on occasion and everything continues to work. When looking in the resource graphic log that runs, I see that the system only has like 300mb memory free. Additionally, the system is running on a 120GB SSD and it only has about 1GB free space on it, so since its set to Windows Managed Virtual Memory size, its likely having a fit because it wants to grow and its stuck within the constraints of the jam packed SSD. Maybe your system was going to warn you that its running out of memory like mine did, but the game took the focus and hid the warning.