Remap Caps Lock and Left Control on Windows XP

Unfortunately I am stuck using Windows XP at work. Every other machine I use is Linux. To increase productivity I have always mapped the Caps Lock key to Control and vice versa. I almost never use the Caps Locks and very frequently use Control so it was an obvious change.

However, under Windows this is not very easy. It took lots of Google searching to find the solution. Save the following to caps-control.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
“Scancode Map”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,1D,00,3A,00,3A,00,1D,00,00,00,00,00,00

Simply right-click the file and tell Windows to merge the changes into the registry. The changes will take effect only after a reboot. Once I found the initial solution finding addition resources on the topic was easy.

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June 14, 2006 | Filed Under winxp 

Comments

  • mubed

    There is also a way without rebooting, but needs an external tool:
    http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Remap_CapsLock_or_oth...>

  • Andy

    Adam, some people have jobs where they may have to work on Windows.

  • Cory: I just bought an old laptop off eBay, a pentium II with 64mb of ram. Could I run XP on it? Would I be that bat-shit insane to actually run XP on it? Hell no. It would run like an absolute dog. And why would I want to pay some exorbitant license fee to Microsoft for the privilege?

    The other problem *I* have is that I've only ever bought one machine from a retailer, and it came with windows 98. All the others have been built by me. Again, why would I choose to use the more expensive, more error-prone, more programmer-unfriendly operating system when I could just install GNU/Linux?
  • David Stanek
    In short I am a programmer and a control freak. It is nice to be able to quickly script my computer to do mundane tasks. Then there is also the philosophy and the community.

    For the average user Linux may not *yet* be attractive. Eventually though, Linux will have the same support and ease of use as Windows.
  • If you have Windows XP, why do you use linux?
    Basically I dont see any advantages to using linux over windows xp, Im dual booting windows
    and ubuntu. Ubuntu is nice and all but I dont see anything that would make me prefer it
    over windows.The only thing i have been using ubuntu for is web browsing playing
    music/movies (cant play games) which I can do better/hassle free in windows.
    So what are the advantages of l using linux over xp?
  • Christopher Hesse
    Besides using a keyboard with the control key in the correct position, this is probably the best idea. If you don't have admin access on the machine (I have to use the computer lab computers sometimes), there is Autohotkey (http://www.autohotkey.com) you only need the line "CapsLock::Ctrl" in your Autohotkey.ini file.
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