Turn NUM LOCK on at start-up

Tacking onto a nine year old topic with 9 pages is probably not the way to resolve an issue in the community.

If you are having an issue with keyboard indicators, describe the issue, describe what you are seeing that you don't think you should be seeing, describe what you are not seeing that you think you should be seeing and describe what you think is not working the way you think it should be working.

This should not be a 9 page discussion.  Windows works only one way in regard to InitialKeyboardIndicators.

2 is a valid value and means Num Lock on.

Here is some discussion about how the keyboard indicators work - the thing to remember is when you power up the system, the BIOS settings are used first (if there are any available), then as Windows loads the default settings are loaded (which is why the indicators may "blink"), then when a user logs in the settings are taken from the way the indicators were set when that user logged out or when they shutdown Windows - that becomes the final setting for that user and that is how things will be when they login again.

No matter what the values are in other places in the registry, when a user logs in the indicators are going to be the same as they were when that user logged out (or when they shutdown Windows).

You may find a value of something like 2147483650 in the registry under HKEY_USERS but that doesn't matter... 

Those settings under .DEFAULT will only be used to set the initial values up up when you create a new user and those values are copied into their personal section of the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_USER (it belongs to that user) - then it doesn't matter anymore if its 2 or 2 hundred million since then the user will have their own profile in the registry that will be used when they login or logout.

Windows remembers (and might adjust) the settings when a user logs off or the system is shutdown and applies it again when the user logs in.  

Now you know one thing that is happening when Windows says "Loading your personal settings" or "Saving your settings...".  

This is why the BIOS setting may appear "not to work" or the keys seem to keep changing.  They are behaving as designed.

When the system boots, the indicators will behave according to the settings in this order:

1.  The BIOS settings (sometimes you can adjust things in the BIOS)

2.  When Windows loads it will load the default indicators for all users... which will all turn off (that is the default Windows behavior)

    (this is why your indicators may "blink" after you power up as Windows loads)

3.  Then when you login, the indicators will assume the state they were in when that user last logged off or shutdown.

Different users/logins could behave different settings when they log in (stored in their user profile) depending on how things are left when the user last logged off.

A user login will always have the same settings when you login that you had when you logged out or shutdown.

For an example, let's say you need to have the Num Lock key on before you login, so you would need to change the Windows default settings.

Read this article for a little background (you will not do this - it is just FYI):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/314879

Each user has their own specific setting in their user profile, but those will not get looked at until the user logs in.

You can adjust the default setting and for each newly created user profile or for an individual profile by adjusting the value of:

InitialKeyboardIndicators

For all (new) users the location for the default InitialKeyboardIndicators is:

HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\CONTROL PANEL\KEYBOARD  (usually set to zero=all OFF)

For the currently logged in user, the location for InitialKeyboardIndicators is:

HKCU\CONTROL PANEL\KEYBOARD (mine is set to two=Num Lock ON after I login)

Here are all the values for InitialKeyboardIndicators:

    * 0 - all indicators off

    * 1 - Caps Lock on

    * 2 - Num Lock on

    * 4 - Scroll Lock on

Or, combine them by adding the values to some other number:

    * 3 - Caps Lock and Num Lock on

    * 5 - Caps Lock and Scroll Lock on

    * 6 - Num Lock and Scroll Lock on

    * 7 - Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock on

If the InitialKeyboardIndicators key does not exist in the registry, create it as a REG_SZ String Value variable.

Thanks Woolverine,

I did it and spent an hour on checking and rechecking all 12 instances of InitialKeyboardInd... 

It still doesn't work.

What happens is that every time I turn the computer off HKEY_CURRENT_USER/ControlPanel/Keyboard reverts to value of 2.

I understand that the value is string and it should be 2147483650,

Is it correct?

Hello

Remember to search thru the hole registry, there are several places you must change the string. On my pc it worked when i changed them all.