Helpful post! But I feel compelled to add that if Rick isn’t around to operate the mouse, right-clicking will have the same results! 
Latest update. I took it out of the QuickLaunch bar and now when I hit the keyboard combo the window that I opened first with the shortcut gets focus.
Still no luck on getting a new instance to launch in xp from the keyboard shortcut assigned to the desktop shortcut.
Try this:
In explorer go to Tools---->Internet options
Click on the Advanced tab.
Under Browsing check to see if “Reuse windows for launching shortcuts” is clicked. If so then unclick and click OK. That should help if I understand your problem correctly.
I should have indicated that I checked that per my Google™ search.
Good tip though!
I also changed the shortcut in case there is some odd program that has that shorcut assigned (I found that Trillian messes with Illustrator’s shortcuts). Didn’t help to try ctrl+alt+x either.
Thanks for the suggestion though, I’ll try anything!
…well almost anything.
One slightly related point: If you happen to be browsing to a web application, especially one that uses ASP sessions, you will often find that using <CTRL-n> confuses the app because both of the browser windows are using the same set of cookies/temp files.
If you truly open a new browser and access the app, then the two sessions are distinct and you’ll have no problems.
That was the case for an app I was building. I suspect it’s also true for apps such as online banking…
<hijack>
That’s actually because the new instance of IE is using the exact same session ID, which is what web apps use to keep the track of the user’s session (with their login ID and permissions and whatnot). There are ways to modify that behavior, but I don’t remember how, right now.
I have Windows XP as well, and I just tried your trick, and it spawned multiple IE windows. It should be possible, then, but something’s mucked up on you computer. Bizarly, I have the “reuse windows” setting checked on mine.
The “reuse windows” checkbox is for clicking links outside of IE, like in an email client, or a text document that highlights URLs. When you reuse windows, existing ones can be hijacked by the program… particularly annoying when someone sends you a link in Outlook. :mad: (Well, annoying until you uncheck this box.)
If it hasn’t been tried, forget the quick launch bar and find the shortcut in your start menu. That’s all I’ve come up with. 
I took it out of the QuickLaunch bar, but my tendency was to create a shortcut on the desktop. Good idea about using the one in the Start Menu - Programs folder. That seems to have done the trick!
Thanks everyone!
OK, so I spoke too soon. I’ve found that windows isn’t smart about how it caches keyboard shortcuts for shortcut items. I couldn’t get the link to take ctrl+alt+x so I used ctrl+alt+z and it worked like a charm. I re-booted and then put in my favorite (ctrl+alt+x) and the damn thing started ignoring me again. Changed it back to ctrl+alt+z and it worked, changed it to ctrl+shift+x and it worked. Tried ctrl+alt+x and it looks like there’s something funky with my machine and ctrl+alt+x.
Oh well. I have a workable workaround so I’m done.
Thanks again everyone for your help!
Awesome! 
The rules governing XP keyboard shortcuts are at AppInit DLLs and Secure Boot - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn and maybe explain the difficulties you describe. One solution is to put multiple copies of a shortcut in your StartMenu and/or StartMenu\Programs and assign them different hotkeys. E.g. ctrl-alt-x, shift-alt-x, shift-ctrl-x could be used to give 3 different instances. Windows Explorer seems to be an exception in that each [Windows-key][E] opens a new instance. Bit late, but maybe will help posterity!