Nestopia save and exit

Hi, i have two questions about nestopia:

1) i have enabled exiting nestopia and return to gameEx by pressing escape once but before returning to gameEx it shows the Windows desktop. How can i prevent this?

2) how can i save a game(state) without using nestopias menu bar? I ask this because i want to use it in a custom cab and would like to be able to save a game with a default button. A button which i can use with every emulator to save a game. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance!