The caps locks key is one of the least commonly used keys on my keyboard…  until I mapped it to a control key!  A lot of the registry hacks available online for remapping the caps lock and control button involve swapping their functionality or swapping other keys.  I have absolutely no use for a caps lock button, so I just map the caps lock button to a control button and leave the control button in the bottom-left corner alone.

Fire up the Registry Editor by clicking Start Menu > Run.

1. Type in regedit, and hit enter.
2. Browse to:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout.
3. Click on Keyboard Layout.
4. Right-click in the table on the right, and click New > Binary Value.
5. A new value will be added in the table.  Name it “Scancode Map” without the quotes.
6. Double-click on the new “Scancode Map” value.
7. A window titled “Edit Binary Value” will pop-up.
8. Enter:
   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
   02 00 00 00 1D 00 3A 00
   00 00 00 00
9. No need to enter the spaces.  They will be automatically inserted as the numbers are entered.
10. Click OK to save your changes.
11. Now reboot.
12. After rebooting, your caps lock will now act as a control button!

Check out the Microsoft Documentation if you’re looking for a more complete technical description of what all the HEX values mean.

Tags: Keyboard, Registry

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.