Windows – Where to find windows keyboard scancode registry information

keyboardwindowswindows-registry

I am in the process of remapping some keys on my Windows 7 keyboard.

I have done the following (in a .reg file):

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

I am interested in being able to remap other keys. However, I am having a heck of a time finding the specific scan codes to do this.

Is there a listing of these scan codes somewhere? I've spent a fair bit of time trying to find information and other than the caps/control I cannot seem to find them. I would like a listing of all scan codes – in a format which makes sense for remapping.

The specific keys I am interested in are:

Menu button (wtf windows)
windows key
alt
shift
function
insert
pause

Best Answer

@fabianroling and anyone else who can't use third-party software: the Keyboard Scan Code Specification from Microsoft has the definitions for all the scan codes. It also says the following:

Under all Microsoft operating systems, all keyboards actually transmit Scan Code Set 2 values down the wire from the keyboard to the keyboard port. These values are translated to Scan Code Set 1 by the i8042 port chip. The rest of the operating system, and all applications that handle scan codes expect the values to be from Scan Code Set 1.

So, nothing Windows-specific, just standard Set 1 codes.

Related Solutions

Linux – Remapping keys on keyboard in Linux

Try xbindkeys. It allows you to bind... er, more esoteric keys to arbitrary commands. As an example, on my laptop, I bound a script to toggle dual-monitor support to Fn-5 (IIRC--I no longer use this binding) using the following command:

(xbindkey '("m:0x0" "c:235") "$HOME/usr/bin/dual-monitor-setup")

I'm using its GUILE support for my config, though, so you'll probably have to modify it, if you want to use the simpler config format. Its documentation is rather good, so you shouldn't have much trouble figuring out how to make it do what you want to.

Edit Keyboard Registry Settings – How to Edit Keyboard Registry Settings for Keys with 3-Character Scan-Codes

The scancodes in the registry are in hexadecimal (base 16), and include two bytes. The first byte is sometimes used as an escape code (0xE0), as for the delete key:

Control's scancode is 58 or 0x003A
F12's scancode is 88 or 0x0058
Delete's scancode is escaped 83 or 0xE053

This results in the following registry edits to make this change (note you have to increase 02,00,00,00 to 03,00,00,00 to indicate the additional key):

53,e0,58,00

What you want to do though, is get a utility called SharpKeys, which will provide a GUI interface to modify the registry key map. You can then compare and examine the registry key before and after to see how it changed the entry.

Best Answer

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Linux – Remapping keys on keyboard in Linux

Edit Keyboard Registry Settings – How to Edit Keyboard Registry Settings for Keys with 3-Character Scan-Codes

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