I've Hit F12 For the Last Time

OK, so whose bright idea was it to put the F12 key so close to the Delete key on the keyboard? And whose bright idea was it to map F12 to "Save As..." in every MS Office application? And, whose bright idea was it to default the Save As... option to the users home directory, even if that directory is redirected to a network share, and it will take up to 30 seconds to list that directory, with the net result that every time you fat-finger the Delete key the computer hangs for 30 seconds while it tries to list the home directory so you can Save As... a document that you don't want to save as?

Maybe it is Vista that is sluggish in figuring out whether offline files are really available or not, but I roam with my laptop all the time. Much of the time I am on a network where my home directory is not available. Yet, Vista/Office 12 tries to list my home directory each time I fatfinger the Delete key. Each time it takes between 5 and 30 seconds for me to get control back of my computer. I got tired of it, so I used the information in this article about the Scan Code Mapper to disable the F12 key altogether. Even my dog could count on one hand (yes, I know dogs don't have hands; that's the point) the number of times in 14 years of using Windows that I have used the F12 key on purpose. I figure I probably won't miss it.

If you want to do the same, run this command from an elevated command prompt:

reg add "hklm\system\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" /v "Scancode Map" /t REG_BINARY /d 0000000000000000020000000000580000000000

Then reboot. If you want to undo the operation, run this command:

reg delete "hklm\system\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" /v "Scancode Map" /f

And then reboot.

If you want to remap other keyboard keys you can do so using the same key. You just modify the binary value that I entered to include additional mappings. The syntax for the Scancode Map key is in the article I linked earlier. The actual key codes you need are in this Word doc: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/input/Scancode.mspx.

 

Published Fri, May 4 2007 12:48 PM by jesper
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Comments

# *** Carlson said on 05 May, 2007 12:04 AM
...and then I want to disable the CapsLock key, put the "@" sign on a huge button in the middle of the keyboard, move the colon to the bottom of the key and the semi-colon to the top, remove the numlock key and just use the keypad as a keypad, have a "tab-right" key on the right of the keyboard and a "tab-left" key on the left side of the keyboard, get rid of the "windows" keys entirely, make the underscore key just do an em-dash, make the quotes key just do a smart quote, and about fifty others. I need somebody to write me a huge macro.
# guy with normal key board said on 07 May, 2007 01:19 PM

my f12 key is 4 inches away from my delete button, what are you talking about.  there is no possible way for a normal person to accidently hit f12 when trying to hit the delete button.  you should go to the doctor because you're probly having seizures

# coboshi said on 15 January, 2009 09:25 AM

well, i have a similar problem, too. My F12 key has an icon that represents Next in playlist and I want to set it to switch songs i winamp. I tried with Global HotKeys in winamp, but it didn't work because f12 key was set to open the Save As command...so I wanted to delete this function. I ran your code, I set up in winamp the f12 code (then 0x0)and...it worked! but unfortunately, when I started to write something, I noticed that the songs were switching as I was pressing the arrows. It's very annoying. I'm too young to know how to create codes, so, if you know how to do a code that doesn't delete F12 totally, please help. Thank you!