Windows – Remote Desktop Connection to Windows has wrong keyboard layout

Neno Loje mentions this issue (and the solution) in his blog.

In the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

Create a new DWORD value IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout and give it the value 1.

That should be sufficient to solve your problem. However, there are some known problems with certain Windows versions, as discussed in these knowledgebase articles:

Windows XP

• The IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout registry entry does not work on a Windows XP-based computer

Windows Server 2003

• The IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout registry entry has no effect in Windows Server 2003
• The terminal server IME keyboard layout differs from the client computer when you remotely log on to a Windows Server 2003 SP1-based terminal server

In addition to that, Remko Weijnen explains on his blog how to even adjust the keyboard profile on the login page.

If you want to change the keyboard layout that is used before logging in (“at the logon screen”) you need to modify the key HKEY_USER\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload:

In the screenshot above the locale id 0413 (Dutch) but you can even add more than one entry and cycle between them with ALT-SHIFT.

A description of the Locale ID’s (LCID’s) can be found in kb 262283.

As suggested by harrymc i'm using an AutoHotKey script right now

!5::[
!6::]
!7::|
!8::{
!9::}
!n::~

i'm still trying to get the auto-run feature of RD working, so it automatically starts the program upon connecting.

Might not be the most elegant solution to this problem, but at least it works and i can easily change the script