Mike van der Meulen's Blog

I hate my laptop - actually, every laptop I ever owned or used. I spend most of my time working on desktop systems and rarely need to be on the road, so working on my laptop is quite rare. Every time I do, I spend half my time complaining about the keyboard. The reason? I hit the Caps Lock key when I need the Shift key and I hit the Windows key instead of the Alt key.

I always felt that the size of a key should be proportional to its usefulness. The Caps Lock key for example is such a relic from times gone by. Actually, I don't think I ever used it not even when I worked on mainframes (yes I'm over 40 :-). Maybe people who have the need to "shout" in forums need the Caps Lock key. Why don't they make special "Troll" keyboards or "DNFTT" keyboards (you're a fellow geek if you know what that means).

And what about that silly Windows key? What is that all about? Yes, I read this. Maybe if I could remember any of the shortcuts I might use them: <sarcasm> Win+Pause is really useful to open System Properties </sarcasm> IF I USED IT OFTEN!!! (Oops, I could have used the Caps Lock key here, but I forgot).

Anyway, I said I fixed my "fat fingers". Well, I'm still a lousy 6 to 8 1/2 finger typist who constantly hits the Caps Lock and Windows keys (even on my desktop). But, I found a simple registry fix that takes care of my problem. The Caps Lock key becomes another Shift key, so I don't even notice when I miss the "real" Shift key.

I combined two different registry fixes (here and here) into one. The whole registry bits are explained nicely in the first link (my source of information) if you're interested in the details. Here is the whole "magic" (or download and run it from here):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,04,00,00,00,2a,00,3a,00,00,00,5b,e0,00,00,5c,e0,00,00,00,00

You'll have to reboot after applying this registry update.