|
Has this ever happened to you? You're
typing away, you look up and suddenly realize you've been typing in caps
all along? If so, you are not alone. This is a very common and annoying habit
and though it can happen to anyone, it’s more likely to happen if you are someone
older who became accustomed to using a typewritter—remember those?
If
you do, you might also remember that it was the SHIFT key that used to turn
off the Caps Lock. With a computer keyboard, it is the Caps Lock key that
you use to turn Caps ON or OFF. The Shift key just disables the Caps Lock
as long as you have it depressed—in other words, once you release the
Shift key, the uppercase letters return.
Here I will show you how to make the Shift key on your keyboard behave
like the Shift on your old typewriter, so that the Caps Lock key can only
be used to turn the Caps Lock ON and the Shift must be used to turn the Caps
Lock OFF. This usually helps to reduce those uppercase errors once you adapt
to the change.
Windows 2000
- Go to the Control Panel and double click
the Keyboard applet icon.
- Click the Input Locales tab.
- There you should see the option to either use the Caps Lock or Shift
key to turn off Caps Lock.
- Choose Press SHIFT key and once you apply your change, test it out.
- If the change didn’t take effect immidiately, then reboot.
Windows 2000 Keyboard
Properties
Windows XP
- Go to the Control Panel and
double click the " Regional and Language
Options" applet icon.
- Click the Languages tab, then click on the Details tab.
- Under the Settings
tab, you should see a
Key settings tab. This may or may not be greyed out depending
if you have additional keyboard definitions installed
or not.
- If not greyed out, select your keyboard,
click the Settings tab and put a checkmark next to "Press the Shift Key" for
turning
off the Caps Lock.
- Test it out and if the change doesn’t take effect
immediately, reboot.
Windows XP
- If the Key Settings tab is greyed out, click Add and add any other
keyboard definition. This should now make the Key Settings tab available.
- Click Apply first and then the Key Settings button
and make your change. If you want, you can now delete the keyboard
definition
you added but doing so will grey out the Key Settings button again.
Registry
Method
If for whatever reason, you prefer or need to use the Registry to
do this, here is how for both Windows 2000 and XP.
- Click Start > Run, type regedit and click Ok.
- Go to your keyboard layout key here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Keyboard Layout
- In the right hand pane, look for a Dword value named Attributes.
- If it exists, double click it, choose Hex format and and change
the value to 10000.
- If it doesn’t exist, create it. Right click
an empty area in the right hand pane and
choose
New > DWORD value. Name it Attributes, double click it,
and enter the same hex value of 10000.Exit
the registry, reboot, and check out the change.
- Pressing and releasing the Shift key should
now turn off the Caps Lock when active..
For more registry tips, subscribe to Registry Answers http://www.freelists.org/webpage/regtips.
|
