Simulate key press using USB HID

[theoracle39]

I am using a PIC 18F4550 to detect when a switch is pressed and then transmit the data via USB to a program written in VB.NET.  What I want to do is send data through USB to simulate a key press without a program running on the PC.  I realize that I could easily send a signal from the PIC to the program on the PC and use VB.NET to trigger a key press event, but I want to do it without using VB.NET.  Is there a way to do this?

[Jan Axelson]

Make the PIC a USB HID-class system keyboard. Microchip has example firmware. Write code to send the desired keypress code to the PC.

Jan