Mac2Win

I recently decided to co-use my USB Mac Keyboard work with my PC @ work. As with every technology, there are some quirks, which manifested for this case in a different keyboard layout for some keys.

Unfortunately, these some keys are the Left/Right-Alt, Left/Right-Command and Left/Right-Windows keys (respectively) as well as the < and § keys (I use a Swiss German Keyboard layout, you know.).

It couldn’t be worse. I do a lot of XML and [X]HTML stuff and—guess what—very often use the < and > keys … not to mention the RightAlt (or AltGr) for inserting a @ into some form or so.

Of course, I got completely screwed up and lost a lot of time trying to get used to the different keyboard layout I had with my Mac Keyboard connected to my PC.

As I want to be as bold as Ölbaum the bold, I started the quest to find some keyboard re-mapping tool or so. It appears that my “Windows 2000 WorkHorse” has a cool feature that lets you re-map keyboard scancodes in the Registry. This Registry entry is located @ the following location:

HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrent VersionControlsFolderKeyboard

in the value Scancode Map. After much trying and some trial-and-error (like re-mapping the ä with PageDown) I finally managed to remap all 6 keys at my leisure.

So, if anyone attempts not to repeat my experience, I gladly offer the corresponding registry entry at this place:

“{style="background-color: #FFDDDD; padding: 4px; border: solid 1pt #993333; font-size: 80%;"} Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlKeyboard Layout] "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,07, 00,00,00,5b,e0,38,00,38,00,5b,e0, 5c,e0,38,e0,38,e0,5c,e0,56,00, 29,00,29,00,56,00,00,00,00,00 "

Load this into your registry and the next time you boot your PC, you will have your ever essential keys back where they belong!

If you ever want to map other keys, look out for a tool called scode22.zip that will spit out the scan codes for nearly every key on a PC keyboard.

Good luck! May all your keys resolve successfully!

Update 13.10.2004

The utility KeyTweak will let you remap keys via a GUI!