Wednesday, 4th June 2008XP Numlock Issue on Login / Startup

Sometimes XP decides that it wants to do its own thing with your Numlock which can cause havoc for people on laptops., the fix is here.

Recently I reinstalled my Sony Vaio and kept finding that somehow the Numlock button had been pressed - as my Vaio doesn't have a dedicated numeric keypad, this turns a big section of the normal keyboard in to a numeric keypad. This means that unless I remember to hit numlock everytime I login, my password is screwey.

After some search I discovered that the Numlock control status can be controlled using a registry key which can be found here:

HKEY_USERS \ .DEFAULT \ Control Panel \ Keyboard \ InitialKeyboardIndicators

Simply change the value to either 0 for off or 2 for on.

  1. Start the Registry Editor
  2. Go to Start
  3. Select Run
  4. Type regedit
  5. Work through the tree to get to HKEY_USERS \ .DEFAULT \ Control Panel \ Keyboard
  6. If the key “InitialKeyboardIndicators” already exists then change its value to the appropriate number, if not, add a new key called “InitialKeyboardIndicators” with the appropriate value.
  7. Click OK
  8. Restart

For the lazier amongst you, simply copy and paste the code below in to a text file (in notepad), save it as "FixMySoddingNumlock.REG", close notepad and double click the file:

To make the Numlock OFF by default use:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard]
"InitialKeyboardIndicators"="0"

To make the Numlock ON by default use:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard]
"InitialKeyboardIndicators"="2"

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