I'm working on a company PC that was used previously by someone else. I don't find that AutoHotKey is installed on this machine.
The Ctrl and Alt keys are swapped - (when I press Ctrlit behaves like I pressed Altand vice-versa). There is no AutoHotKey installed (if you could think it causes the problem).
How can I swap the keys back in the "native way"?
53 Answers
According to ( ) it's possible to remap keys by editing the registry. Perhaps the previous user of your computer has done so, making the two keys point to each other? To check do the following:
- In the start menu type "
regedit", it will appear in the search results, and then run it. - Navigate to "
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout". - Look for an entry called "Scancode Map".
If you don't see a key called "Scancode Map" then this isn't the problem. Perhaps you should check the Windows Add/Remove software section and see what else they've installed (as there are programs other than AutoHotKey out there).
If you do see the "Scancode Map" entry then some of your keys are being remapped.
In my test this entry was not present on a clean Windows installation, and so I would assume it's not needed for regular functions (but there could be other variables unknown).
I would not advise deleting it unless you've examined the contents, even then it's really something that IT should handle. You mentioned having support staff so I assume you are in a work environment so it's possible IT has other additional keys being remapped intentionally that you wouldn't want to delete.
Unfortunetly I don't know enough about this subject to assist you in examining the key's data to determine specifically which keys are being remapped. The previously linked article is also rather brief on the subject, and does not list the codes equating to the alt or control keys.
4Check the setting in the bios keyboard section, called swap alt ctrl or similar. It's one possible location for this behaviour.
4if you can access the device manager you can 'uninstall' the current keyboard and then do a restart, the system will recognize the keyboard as a new device and reinstall the default driver for it, to make sure this trick to work, uninstall the keyboard, shut down the pc, swap the keyboard with another device (if it's an USB), then restart the pc
if you can't access the device manager (due admin/user privileges), go and talk with the IT maintenance guys and explain your problem to them, they are in the obligation of fixing it
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