Remap Japanese Keys in Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator

Normally you can uninstall a keyboard using the following method:

1. Go to add/remove programs
2. Find the keyboard, it should be the same name as the Description field of the project's properties in Keyboard Layout Creator.
3. Press Modify
4. Choose Remove the keyboard layout

The problem was that I uninstalled it incorrectly and I had to manually remove it.

If you need to manually remove it, here's how I did it:

1. Remove the keyboard from the Language and Regional settings:
   1. Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages > Details...
   2. If it exists as one of the installed services, you should remove it. You can do this by adding another keyboard (e.g. US) and making it the default one, then removing the keyboard you are trying to get rid of.
2. Open regedit
3. Warning: you should backup your registry in case you accidentally delete something important.
4. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\
5. Find the key that represents your keyboard: (referred to as "the key" in following steps)
   • It should be in the form XXXXXXXX (an 8 hex digit number).
   • Each key should have values such as: Layout Display Name, Layout File, Layout Id, Layout Product Code, Layout Text.
   • The Layout Text property should match the keyboard name that you chose.
   • Mine was near the end and started with an a instead of a 0 like all the others.
6. Take a look at the Layout File which should be a .dll name. I will refer to it as "the dll" in the following steps.
7. Look for the dll in C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and delete it if it exists.
8. Look for the dll in C:\WINDOWS\system32 and delete it if it exists.
9. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybCodes and see if it has a Name which is equal to the key's name (e.g. XXXXXXXX) and a value such as en. If it does, delete it.
10. Navigate back to the key (from step 5), and delete the entire key.

You need to modify the .klc file manually.

Basically you just modify the VK_ column to match the value in column 1.

So for example if you want to bind L to N, you would create the keyboard as you normally would in KLC. Then you would open the KLC file in a text editor. Find the value L in the VK_ column, and switch it to an N.

For more information, I wrote the complete steps on my blog.