How to Enable or Disable the Caps Lock Key in Windows 10  

ptoye said:

This is great!

But.... when I try it it tells me that I don't have sufficient permission. I can always log in as admin to make the registry hack, but that's not too useful, especially for people who aren't particularly tech-savvy (like my SO who doesn't like the Caps Lock key any more than I do).

Can you tell us how to make the .reg files obeyable by normal users please?

Thanks in advance,

Peter

Hello Peter,

I'm afraid it requires you to be signed in as an administrator to make the registry changes to enable or disable the Caps Lock key.

ptoye said:

Ah, that's a shame. Would it be a good idea to mention that at the top of this thread? After all, if I really want to SHOUT by using the caps lock key (and my SO says she sometimes needs to do that), all the rigmarole of logging in as admin, applying the hack, and logging in again as normal rather destroys the convenience.

Someone on another forum has suggested that it might be possible to get round this by making the registry key writeable by a normal user. Do you know if that would work?

It's in the note box at the top of the tutorial.

You could create shortcuts run commands to make the registry changes, and use "Run as administrator" on the shortcuts while signed in as a standard user. You will be prompted by UAC to enter administrator credentials for approval though.

ptoye said:

Oops so it is! The issue really is that even if you do that, you still have to log out and in again for it to take effect. What's really needed is a way of disabling.enabling caps lock with a single click, and Microsoft in their wisdom have decided that this won't be possible. Yours is a great hack for a one-off, but not for my SO.

You don't need to sign out and in of your standard user account.

You would just need to provide your administrator credentials for UAC for elevated rights (Run as administrator) to run the command for registry changes that require elevated rights.

Brink said:

You don't need to sign out and in of your standard user account.

You would just need to provide your administrator credentials for UAC for elevated rights (Run as administrator) to run the command for registry changes that require elevated rights.

That's not what I've found. I edited (as admin) the permissions for the registry key to allow users to alter it. But when I run the hack it doesn't change anything until I log out and back in again, after which it's fine. This happens on two machines, running Windows Home and Pro. It doesn't make any difference whether I'm disabling or enabling, or whether I'm logged in as a normal user or as an admin.

It doesn't ask for an admin password (and it shouldn't, as normal users have permission to write), but I do get the warning message that what I'm doing is highly dangerous. That's as expected.

When you said 'run shortcuts' earlier I assume you meant me to create a shortcut to the .reg file. When I right-click on that there's no 'run as admin' - see screenshot:


If I dig deeper into the shortcut properties, the 'Run as admin' tick box is greyed out. Really frustrating.

@ptoye,

I was thinking create a .bat file with REG commands to make the registry changes for this.

You could then either right click on the .bat file and click on "Run as administrator", or.....

... create a shortcut of the .bat file, and set this shortcut to always "Run as administrator" so you don't have to right click like above to "Run as administrator".

Unfortunately, you would still need to sign out/in or restart the computer afterwards to apply.

ptoye said:

Ah, that's a bit sad. It would seem that Microsoft is so wedded to the idea of the caps lock key that they can't conceive of anyone who wouldn't want it without jumping through a load of hoops.

Thanks Brink for your time and patience.

You're most welcome.

Yeah, it's a lot trouble. Usually, it's not something that people want to enable and disable often on demand though, so that could be why.