Remap the F12 Key, CapsLock Key or any Key in Windows XP, 2000, Vista and 2003

I often hit the Caps Lock key accidentally and find myself typing IN UPPER CASE when I didn′t intend to. I then have to change the text to sentence case like I wanted. I actually find no use at all for the Caps Lock key and changed it′s behavior so it won′t stick in caps mode. In simply acts like a shift key without the stickyness. This page details how to change this behavior as well as changing any other key on the keyboard.

DOS and its Windows offspring, Win9x and ME, have a feature for keyboard remapping. This was not included in Windows 2000 and XP. There is a way, however, to remap keys in the registry. Backup your registry before starting. This is advanced registry editing; if you are not comfortable editing the registry, DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS. You can do it the easy way by downloading the .reg file and merging into the registry, then rebooting.

Microsoft has a tool for creating keyboard layouts in Windows 2000, XP, and 2003. You can start from scratch or load an existing layout and modify it and save it as a keyboard layout (.KLC) file . You can then select the keyboard layout in Control Panel->Regional and Language Settings->Languages->Details. The limitation of this tool is that you cannot change CapsLock, Tab, Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Enter, Backspace, F1 to F12, Number pad, arrows, Ins, Del, PgUp, PgDn, etc. Well... it's pretty limited. Try it yourself:

Experts only below this point!

Remap CapsLock Key

Open Regedit and go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]. Be careful not to edit the "Keyboard Layouts" key. If you want the remapping to apply on a user-specific basis, log in as that user (you need to be an administrator in XP Home or have registry editing privileges, usually a power user or administrator, in XP Pro) and use [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout].

Click on Edit->New->Binary Value and name it "Scancode Map" without the quotes. The content of the key will depend on what behavior you want to assign to the Caps Lock key. I simply set the Caps Lock key to function as the Left Shift key. This way, I get caps while it′s down, no caps when it′s up. This has no affect on the Left Shift key ­ it continues to work normally.

In order to remap Caps Lock to Left Shift, double click the Scancode Map key and enter the following binary values: "00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,2A,00,3A,00,00,00,00,00" without the quotes or the commas and click OK.

Figure 1:  Binary Value for Remapping Keyboard Keys

The important parts of this sequence are the 2a and the 3a. 2a is the target of the remapping (Left Shift) and the 3a is the key that you will physically push (Caps Lock). You can remap any key to function as any other key on your keyboard by changing the binary values.

After entering the value, close Regedit and reboot. If you used the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key, the remapping should work immediately. If you used HKEY_CURRENT_USER, it won′t take effect until after you have logged in.

Remap Multiple Keys

If you want to remap more than one key, such as swapping keys, you need to add additional codes to the same binary value. In the value for remapping the Caps Lock key, the 02 reflects remapping of one key. 03 would be for two remaps, 04 for three, etc.(one plus the number of remaps). Just change the 02 to reflect the number of keys you are remapping.

Each remap is a series of four binary values. For the Caps Lock example, the values are 2a, 00, 3a, 00. A remap of the Left Alt key to function as Backspace, would be 0e, 00, 38, 00. To combine these two remaps, change the 02 to 03 and add the four values after the 2a, 00, 3a, 00 resulting in a longer binary value for the key. The remapping of two keys - Caps Lock to Left Shift and Left Alt to Backspace ­ would look like "00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,2A,00,3A,00,0E,00,38,00,00,00,00,00". The sequence needs to start with eight pairs of zeroes and end in four pairs of zeroes. Since the Caps Lock feature is no longer available after using these methods, you could remap a fairly useless key like Scroll Lock to function as Caps Lock (3a,00,46,00).

Remap Any Key

Aside from altering the Caps Lock key, remapping multiple keys could be very useful for Point-of-Sale systems or games that make heavy use of keyboard shortcuts. If the remapping is applied on a per user basis, a normal keyboard layout could be regained by logging in as another user.

Table 1: Examples

You can use these examples directly by creating a new text file and naming it "remap.reg" or anything with the .reg extension.  Then paste in the following text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5c,e0,37,e0,00,00,00,00

Be sure to include a blank line at the end (an extra carriage return).  You can substitute an example from the table for the text after the hex:. You can also use it as a boilerplate for creating your own remap sequence.

Save the file and right-click and choose Merge.  This will place it into your registry and will take affect on the next boot.

Below are fairly complete scan codes for common keyboards.  There are a number of codes not implemented and may represent nonstandard keys that launch applications.

To simply disable a key, its target should be 00 00.  Those listed below as No Code cannot be remapped.  I have not tested for a limit on the number of remaps possible using this technique.  I suspect that the limit is 255 characters in the binary value.  If you need to change a lot of keys, start with the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to change the standard QWERTY keys first.

Table 2: Complete Scan Codes