I'm on a Macbook Pro with a French Keyboard. Keyboard layout works fine when connecting to Windows XP Professional but I cannot get certain keys to work:
For example $, &, é, § and @ etc. work fine.
-
Forward slash
/using ⇧ + : works. -
Backslash
\using ⌥ + ⇧ + : does not work. -
Pipe
|using ⌥ + ⇧ + L does not work.
Is there any configuration that I can do to make my keyboard work?
I've had this issue on my Windows VM in Virtual Box but fixed it with a custom keyboard layout. However when connecting to servers and workstations over the network this is not a solution since I can not configure each machine I need to connect to.
Under preferences, if I disable the Alt key it still does not work and on-top of that working without an Alt Key in Windows is no fun.
Best Answer
In the case of backslash \, the problem is a difference between where Macintosh French keyboards put the backslash (which is ⌥+⇧+:), and where Windows French keyboards put the backslash (which is ctrl+⌥+8).
Since the way Remote Desktop works is that scancodes, not characters, are sent to the remote system, you have to honor the Windows keyboard and press ctrl+⌥+8 to get a backslash.
Pipe | is ctrl+⌥+6
I was able to debug this using the on-screen keyboards, which both Macintosh and Windows support.