Manually mapping a Windows key on a Thinkpad

Editing with the Windows registry / 2005-08-12

I'm not sure if it stems from a multi decade vendetta, or its simply tradition, but Thinkpads lack a Windows Key. If you're running your favorite Linux distro on one of these great machines, that may not be a problem. If you do a lot of work in Windows, however, you may have become accustomed to wooing women with your fast Windows Key combos.

Dispair not, the Windows key can be manually mapped with the registry. Obviously, if you don't know what you're doing, you can easily break your computer beyond an easy repair. So - becareful if you decide to play with your keys. And, if you're not into doing things manually, there are a lot of good keymappers out there, including: HoeKey, SharpKeys, and MS PowerToys.

We first need to pick a key to swap with the Windows Key (which doesn't yet exist). There's a number of F keys which I can't ever remember using, and for this tutorial I selected F7.

We need to create a .reg file (using your favorite text editor, Notepad works fine):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout];
"00000409"="KBDUS.DLL"
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,41,00,41,00,5B,E0

Save and right click the file, select Merge. Approve the action with a "Yes", then give her a reboot.

If you would like to use a different F key, just modify the fifth line:

F1: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,3B,00,3B,00,5B,E0
F2: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,3C,00,3C,00,5B,E0
F3: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,3D,00,3D,00,5B,E0
F4: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,3E,00,3E,00,5B,E0
F5: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,3F,00,3F,00,5B,E0
F6: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,40,00,40,00,5B,E0

F8: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,42,00,42,00,5B,E0
F9: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,43,00,43,00,5B,E0
F10: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,44,00,44,00,5B,E0
F11: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,57,00,57,00,5B,E0
F12: "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,5B,E0,58,00,58,00,5B,E0

Obviously you'll want to stray from anything commonly used. There are a few pretty good articles out there on this same technique. Keith has an indepth piece here, Christian Cantrell posted about this issue in his blog, and PCWorld had an article in December 2001.

As if there weren't enough already, Microsoft has a good piece on keyboard shortcuts.

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Plug n play / 2009-06-16

A sloppy implementation of Black Scholes on the TI-83 Plus. Read.

Getting C# and mySQL to play together (1187)

with C# / mySQL connector / 2008-01-28

For that project where using MS SQL isn't going to cut it. Read.

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"Ohhh. Let me see that." / 2007-03-12

For the most part, we took it seriously. Read.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) on Acer Travelmate C110 (13688)

It's thin, it's light. It's a tablet. / 2006-10-18

There's nothing cooler than a really small machine running linux. This is a collection of notes from the install, setup, and tweaking of the system running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake). It's probably a little over verbose. Read.