Apple Keyboard and Windows 7 @ and " characters swapped over

Since putting bootcamp on Apple Macs we've always had a problem where the keys on the Keyboard in windows were never 'quite' right. Almost, but not. The most annoying one was the old @ key being swapped with " key.

Even after installing bootcamp drivers this problem persisted. It did turn quite interesting though:
I went into keyboard language setup and added "United Kingdom (Apple)", and deleted the bog standard "United Kingdom". After this, in some dialogue boxes the keyboard was behaving correctly (" and @ not swapped) and in everything else the @ and " keys were swapped around!

After trauling through google search results, I searched for Keyboard Regedit as I was sure something could be done here. After finding this article about changing keyboard regions I did the following steps:

1. Opened Regedit
2. went to  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload
3. Took note of what was here
1. there were two entries:
1. 1.   a0000809
2. 1.  00000809
4. I next went to  HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload
5. Took a note what was here
1. there was only one entry
1. 1.  00000809
6. I thus deduced that the Apple keyboard was a0000809 and the normal (incorrect) keyboard was 00000809
7. I deleted the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload\00000809 so there was only one entry here
8. I edited the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload entry so it read:
1. 1.  a0000809
9. I rebooted and it all worked!!!!!

So, the problem was that Windows was using the Normal UK language layout for the keyboard, and when I added the Apple UK language layout it only used it at times because there was two entries for my login. But when the computer initially loads up the Apple version wasn't there. Now time for a cuppa.

Number Lock (numlock) at login screen in Windows XP

After re-imaging a MacBook Pro with Windows XP, I noticed (annoyingly) that the num lock was always switched on upon boot up at the login screen! After googling it I found this post, which describes how to change it on startup in the registry. Simply change:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=3
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=1


This turns num lock off. Unfortunately, I think this just applies to whoever's logged in at the time, and doesn't apply to the login screen. Simple enough though, and is described at the bottom of the post in a reply (although for some reason he used some weird code - "2147483650" (string value)). I did this:


HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=1


and it worked.

CD and DVD drives "Device cannot start" error 10 in device manger - Windows

A member of staff brought in their PC today saying that the DVD drives (there are two) don't work.

Looking in Device manager I found that both DVD drives were down as CD drives and in the details it says something along the lines of:
The device cannot start error 10

My first idea was to do with Master and Slave jumper switches on the back of the DVD drives. Tried all the combinations. For some the drives came up as their actual names, but still came up with the error message.

After this I did a system restore to its' earliest point. Still no luck.

I finally thought it had to do with iTunes. I've experienced it before, when installing iTunes the CD drive stops working in Windows. I had a search around on google and found this forum. It seemed promising and pointed towards this Microsoft troubleshooting guide.

Also, another tutorial is here from Apple who admit the problem.

Although this was to do with Windows XP and error 31 I found other forums mentioning the registry and "Upper Filters" and "Lower Filters". I deleted the UpperFilter registry entry mentioned and it worked a treat.

Basically:

1. load up Regedit by going to Start > Run > Regedit
2. go to:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. delete the UpperFilter, usually at the bottom
4. Reboot the machine

Done

Daylight savings Time Discrepency on the Apple Macs

I originally had a problem back in 2009 with time being one hour ahead or behind on OS X on dual boot macs. Happened after daylight savings time. As it happens OS X and Windows saves the time to the internal clock differently during daylight savings time. One uses gmt and adds/minus' the time accordingly and the other saves the time as absolute (if that makes sense?)

So, heres the quick fix I found for windows to act more like OS X:

’m having problems at the moment with the Apple macs, specifically the Dual Boot ones with time discrepancy. Basically, ever since the clocks have gone forward, the macs intermittently show time one hour in front and don’t let anyone log it. It only updates its time through the time server once someone has logged in (handy).

It turns out it is due to the different ways windows and OSX handle the internal clock and daylight savings. Windows sets the clock at GMT and adds 1 hour during daylight savings. OS X changes the internal clock to the daylight savings (or the other way around). So either one or the other is always out by one hour. Of course Windows always wins because it updates the clock before login and Mac users can’t login to update the clock back.

Apparently the easiest way to fix this is to modify windows to read the clock time like os x does. There are two steps:
1. Change/add a registry entry in Windows:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
 SYSTEM
  CurrentControlSet
   Control
    TimeZoneInformation
     RealTimeIsUniversal   = 1
2. Stop the Apple Time Service from running

Found this out here -> http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=3807859#post3807859

I’ve got around 60 Macs I need to do this to, and was wondering if you guys have got any ways of doing these things on mass?

Otherwise I’ll have to write a batch file I think?

Thanks in advanced

Stephen





Mark later wrote a script which fixed it and ran it from his SMS server.


Microsofts knowledge base article of how to set the time server stuff up:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314054#EXTERNAL

Also found this helpful advice on changing registry quickly, and this one on command line arguments

Just ran the scripts mentioned earlier. Once Windows is "fixed", reboot into OS X, set it to the right time and all should be well.