Posts Tagged ‘shift’
Switch between English and German keyboard layouts on German keyboards (Windows)
German keyboards are usually QWERTZ keyboards, named after the first line of letters up to the first that differs from the English layout, which is QWERTY.
You can switch between these two using the key combination Alt + Shift.
This switch may be the cause of your keyboard behaving strangely – for example if you pressed the combination by accident. In this case z would be replaced by y and nearly every special character would be mapped differently. Try to switch layouts if you experience that.
Enter Safe Mode in Windows 8 Consumer Preview
In previous versions of Windows, it was always possible to troubleshoot problems by booting into Safe Mode by hammering on the F8 button on start-up – with Windows 8 CP, this process has become slightly more complicated.
On first glance you may think that safe mode is only to be entered after setting the appropriate options in the msconfig menu accessible by typing the same into a Run prompt. You can do this, however there is also an option you can use on boot – the key combination for that has changed to Shift + F8. So to enter safe mode on boot, hold Shift and hammer your finger on F8 again before the fish appears. If the fish appears without any notion of any repairing attempts, restart again. On the first attempt to do this, it will most likely not work. I needed six or seven attempts to actually get into the advanced boot options, if it does not work for you, try harder! If it did however, you will notice some line stating something about repair. After some possible minutes of auto-repairing the computer itself, Windows 8 finally shows you the advanced troubleshooting menu. Click Advanced Options:
Afterwards select Troubleshoot:
Head for Advanced options:
Afterwards choose Windows Startup Settings:
The next screen shows the actions that will be taken in Safe Mode. Click Restart:
The computer will be rebooted afterwards and you will be taken to the Safe Mode selection screen of the old days:
Make Caps Lock Behave Like Shift (Windows)
The minority of Windows users have really ever needed Caps Lock – most of the passages written in capital letters are still done with Shift only. Because of that, most people will find the Caps Lock key rather annoying since everybody has already experienced accidently using it and finding out too late. If you are one of those who could easily abandon the Caps Lock function there is a great registry option for you (with which you can not only change the function of Caps Lock, but of every other key as well). Open the registry by entering regedit in a Run… prompt and browse the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout key. Now create a new value inside of it by right-clicking on the right-hand registry frame, selecting New > Binary Value and naming it Scancode Map. Modify it by double-clicking and enter the following (without the spaces – these will be added automatically; don’t get confused about the four-digit string on each line’s beginning):
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 2a 00 3a 00 00 00 00 00
This is what it should look like in the window:
After the changes are done, close the registry and reboot your machine. The Caps Lock key should now function like a normal Shift key.
More Options on Right-click (Windows 7)
There is a feature in Windows 7 that allows access on more options on right-click with any file, just by holding the Shift key while clicking.
The shift option alters the menus of nearly every file to open. For example, it adds the Run as different user and Copy as path options to executables, the Open in new process, Open command window here and Copy as path options to folders and many different new options such as the libraries to the Send to option.