Remap key combinations in Windows

Question

This question is similar to this one, but the accepted solution doesn't work in my case.

I work on two different laptops. On one, the Home and End keys are only available by pressing Fn+Left and Fn+Right. This can make it rather annoying when switching between the two since I always go to press Fn-Right and not get what I want.

The tool suggested in the other question is Sharpkeys, however it doesn't recognise Fn+Right as a different key from Right, and I suspect that registry twiddling isn't going to help me here. (?)

Is there any way to remap this combination?

(I'm on Windows Vista if that helps)

Answer 1

Unfortunately for you fn keys are not passed to the OS and are all translated in the hardware (/ firmware) before the OS sees it.

Your best bet that you may not like is just to use a external keyboard. I use one and would not go back to using the laptop keyboard if I did not have to!

Answer 2

My advice is to remap the END and HOME keys to other keys on your laptop keyboard you do not use often. I have noticed this issue when using a laptop. Especially when trying to select sections of text with the shift key and the end button. Doing so is very tough to do depending on the layout of your keyboard.

The way I solved this problem was to remap the home and the end button to F11 and F12. I have never needed to use an app that needs these keys for anything, so you are probably safe remapping them. Another bonus is you are more or less guaranteed to have these keys on your laptop keyboard.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The best remapping tool I've found is SharpKeys. It won't handle the fn keys for you, but it will allow you to map end and home to something else on the keyboard.

Answer 4

You can do this with a keyboard layout editor. More info here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4121760/remap-keyboard-combinations-not-just-single-registry-values (stackoverflow)