MacBook Pro @ and ” Key Remapping in Parallels
I recently treated myself to a new MacBook Pro, and one of the first things I did (after fitting a ridiculous amount of RAM) was to install Parallels. This splendid piece of software allows OS X to run other operating systems in a virtual machine, which means I can do boring Windows-based day-job work on my shiny new Apple laptop.
Parallels is a fairly new program, so it still has a few kinks. I couldn’t get my old copy of XP SP1 to install properly, for example, but once I’d dug out a more recent SP2 install disk I was away. There are numerous small quirks in Windows XP when running on Apple hardware, not least of which is the imperfect mapping of the Apple keyboard onto the characters produced by Windows. Parallels takes care of many integration problems with its Parallels Tools software, which is easily installed in a guest OS with a couple of clicks, but one thing that hasn’t yet been addressed, as far as I can see, is this keyboard map issue. Most irritating is the swapping of the @ and ” keys, perhaps because I’ve only just switched from a normal UK PC keyboard, and having to swap between the two layouts depending on what application I’m in was annoying.
After much hunting around on the web for a simpler solution I decided to resort to remapping those two keys by hacking about with the registry. Using Microsoft’s guide to the Scancode Mapper and their scan code documentation, I came up with the following registry key which fixed the problem doesn’t fix the problem at all, see below:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
“Scancode Map”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,03,00,28,00,28,00,03,00,\
00,00,00,00
Save that to a .reg file using notepad (or download this), import it, reboot, and behold! your @ and ” keys produce what’s actually printed on them in both Windows XP and OS X. I’ve not found any other key mappings that have annoyed me enough to swap them yet, but if I do I shall update this post to cover my alterations.
Edit: I’ve just discovered that whilst the above scancode map does swap the @ and ” keys, it also swaps the associated 2 and ‘ keys, which is flipping useless. I shall continue to work on this problem till I have it fixed.
Further edit: this post here (free registration required) is a link to a keyboard map for a UK Mac Pro, which seems to fix the problem. I haven’t figured out how to type a # yet, but apart from that things seem to be working rather nicely.
Mike says:
@ and ” being swapped means windows is expecting a US keyboard when you have a UK one or vice versa, isn’t it?
Certainly I get it on my one US keyboard machine. In the control panel go to regional options and the Input Locales tab.
Oh, and I thought I’d read you HAD to have XP SP2 minimum for Parallels, but I may be wrong.
It’s deeply cool though - I love the “coherence” mode although it freaks a few people out. Hopefully in the future they’ll get it to use more than one core on the host system which would speed it up immensely, but till then it is very impressive.
2007-07-23 08:39
Tom Ryan says:
I initially thought it might be the US/UK thing, but everything that can be set to “UK” is (and it is a UK keyboard, it has a £ on it).
The Parallels help files say it supports “XP SP0, SP1, SP2″ but I imagine that there are so many different builds of XP out there that it’s impossible to support them all and some weird little bugs might be able to creep in. Then again, I might have done something stupid whilst installing it…
2007-07-23 15:03
Ben says:
The Languages settings in Regional Options of the Windows XP Control Panel do the job! Adding another keyboard (eg: US International) along with the UK keyboard allows me to swap between keyboard settings by pressing CTRL+SHIFT (ALT+SHIFT changes languages by the way), so you can type ” and @ as the Mac keyboard shows or swap to how your UK PC keyboard would do it with (” above 2, @ above ‘).
TO GET A ‘#’ press ALT 3.
2008-04-13 09:14