PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Most laptop makers are now leaving the NumLock key out of their smaller notebooks. That’s a disaster for people wh
[See the full post at: No NumLock key? Problem solved! Here’s the fix.]
![]() |
There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented on this site. |
SIGN IN | Not a member? | REGISTER | PLUS MEMBERSHIP |
-
No NumLock key? Problem solved! Here’s the fix.
Home » Forums » Newsletter and Homepage topics » No NumLock key? Problem solved! Here’s the fix.
- This topic has 30 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 1 week, 5 days ago.
AuthorTopicB. Livingston
AskWoody MVPViewing 20 reply threadsAuthorReplies-
Rick Corbett
AskWoody_MVPI don’t understand why the article includes a download link for AutoHotkey 2.0.2 pointing to OlderGeeks.com rather than to AutoHotkey‘s own website, where a plethora of help and support is also available.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Will Fastie
ManagerI don’t understand why the article includes a download link … to OlderGeeks.com
Because we have a relationship with them. We know how zealous the McElveens are about assuring the safety of downloaded software and thus consider using those links a comfort to those tentative about freeware. OG always provides the author’s site (if one remains), so anyone can trace back to it.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
Rick Corbett
AskWoody_MVPBecause we have a relationship with them.
Whilst I appreciate that, my concern is that the choice of OlderGeeks.com over AutoHotkey Foundation LLC for the download inadvertently makes it more difficult for new users of AutoHotkey.
The download link on the AutoHotkey foundation website links to a setup.exe file which helps new users by offering choices (including portable installation, if wanted), installs the appropriate version of AutoHotkey automatically and provides an info dashboard.
By comparison, the download link on OlderGeeks.com is to a ZIP file with no information about how to use it.
-
-
Alex5723
AskWoody PlusWindows 10 tip: Access symbols, emojis, and other special characters
Entering special characters, including foreign currency symbols, fractions, and emoji, is a cumbersome task on most physical keyboards. Use this hidden Windows 10 option to open an on-screen keyboard that puts all those characters at your fingertips…
Henwin
AskWoody PlusUh, Brian, please don’t tell my Unicomp (Part #: UB4TP4A) keyboard that it’s not a US-International keyboard. It will get very upset, ’cause it is.
Seriously, I switched to US-International layouts years ago, because, well, of the additional characters available on it, that aren’t on the standard keyboard. I hope to never have to return to the US standard keyboard layout……
dvhirst865
AskWoody PlusMicrofix
AskWoody MVPA method, which I use, is to open: https://www.alt-codes.net/ within a browser tab and leave it open then just click on the symbol required and paste to the document. There are many symbols to use on this site with codes available.
Useful if you prefer using a mouse over a touchpad with no app/ program required. ♥ ♫ ♪Keeping IT Lean, Clean and Mean!3 users thanked author for this post.
Still Anonymous
AskWoody PlusThis one is a fascinating topic. I find it interesting that the only European language that uses Latin scripting and no diacritical characters (or other special characters) is US English. And of course, many of the standards we work with come from American development
My employer works in a multi-lingual environment, and we do some amount of work with bootable media that is password-protected. We’ve discovered that the only non-alphanumeric character that is usable for a password on any computer is physical space. Everything else may vary in location, depending on language. I believe that comes from BIOS that assume US English until a language-specific keyboard driver is loaded.
One other possible use of special characters would be passwords. Not all password systems will accept 8-bit ASCII, and as noted, if you have a keyboard that doesn’t have a NumLock, that’s a problem, but if you put something like ¢ in a password, that’s going to make it far more difficult to crack a password, where both brute-force and dictionary attacks probably don’t anticipate values above ASCII 127.
Norio
AskWoody PlusI’ve been using WinCompose (https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose), which has many intuitive features, both portable and installer modes, and an assignable compose key (default is the right <Alt> key). However, this looks like it might be easier to use, especially as I am familiar with AutoHotKey — thanks, Brian!
1 user thanked author for this post.
Ricard
AskWoody PlusThis is brilliant, and I’ll use it for any of my programs other than WordPerfect.
I will note that WordPerfect has a similar method built in for special characters, using most of the same combinations as your Quick Keys, triggered by the Ctrl-W keystroke — one of the many reasons that I vastly prefer WordPerfect over MS Word.
I may, however, remap that feature from Ctrl-W to your Backquote key, which seems much easier to type in a line of text.
(One minor advantage to Word is the Shift-Enter keystroke for a line break, which requires Ctrl-Shift-L in WordPerfect. WordPerfect can remap most keystrokes, but NOT those using Enter. But this also has been fixed with the “remarkable AutoHotKey”, which can.)
Thank you.
Win 7 Pro, 64-Bit, Group B ESU,Ivy Bridge i3-3110M, 2.4GHz, 4GB, XP Mode VM, WordPerfectgeorgea
AskWoody LoungerAHK is great, but a real simple, easy to use key remapper [only uses the registry] is
https://www.randyrants.com/category/sharpkeys/
https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys
I use it to add a “right click” key on my laptop.
Will Fastie
ManagerWhilst I appreciate that
I prefer to “front” freeware with a reliable source. I think there are basically three kinds of original sources — ones you can absolutely trust because you have familiarity; ones whose Web presence is, shall we say, marginal; and ones that no longer exist.
OlderGeeks injects a level of trust in them all.
Besides, our audience is savvy enough to look at these things carefully. I dare say that most will find the resources at the AHK site. After all, we did provide a link to the AHK documentation at the AHK site in the article.
Save_Us_from_MS
AskWoody LoungerWhilst I appreciate that
I prefer to “front” freeware with a reliable source. I think there are basically three kinds of original sources — ones you can absolutely trust because you have familiarity; ones whose Web presence is, shall we say, marginal; and ones that no longer exist.
OlderGeeks injects a level of trust in them all.
Besides, our audience is savvy enough to look at these things carefully. I dare say that most will find the resources at the AHK site. After all, we did provide a link to the AHK documentation at the AHK site in the article.
Maybe I am not old enough or geeky enough, but I have never heard of OlderGeeks before. (I know MajorGeeks)
ibe98765
AskWoody PlusI use a very old freeware program from a now apparently defunct website called Map Of Char. I put the link to the program in my taskbar quick launch area (yes, I still use and love QL!). When I need a special char, like a degree symbol ° (Alt-0176), I open the program, click on the symbol and it shows me the Alt-number combo I need to enter. Easy peasy.
Autumn Lesoch
GuestRick Corbett
AskWoody_MVPMaybe I am not old enough or geeky enough, but I have never heard of OlderGeeks before. (I know MajorGeeks)
OlderGeeks is, IMO, a really-well curated repository of all those teeny-weeny utilities you never knew you needed… until you tried them and suddenly thought – why didn’t I know about this before?
For example, I never knew about a streaming audio service fronted by a UI called Pocket Radio Player… but I now use it almost every day to listen to MY favourite sounds.
I must admit that I avoid MajorGeeks as it continues to play fast and loose with the efforts of others without any accreditation. Just search for MajorGeeks here on AskWoody… no doubt my previous comments (rants) will surface, for example: Why I never link to MajorGeeks. It’s just me… I believe in crediting the original authors of code/reg/whatever that I use as a basis for my own (poor) efforts. 🙂
Hope this helps…
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
geekdom
AskWoody_MVPWhy I never link to MajorGeeks
accesses a thread in Moderator Forum and that thread is not available if logged out or a regular user.
Carpe Diem {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1778 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox115.0b1 MicrosoftDefender
AusJohn
AskWoody PlusI found the article really interesting, and would like to use the Auto Hotkey system on a laptop where I don’t have the luxury of a numeric keypad.
However, I’m a little lost.
I mainly have a need for this type of utility for adding Alt-0xxx symbols (such as Alt-0179 °, Alt-0149 •, etc.) to documents, but there aren’t any such examples in Brian’s .ahk file.
Would some kind soul be able to give me a couple of examples of how I can accomplish this?
-
B. Livingston
AskWoody MVPThank you for your interest. There is a blue-and-tan “cheat sheet” in the article and in the downloadable ZIP file. It shows most of the glyphs that Brian’s Quick Keys can produce. To enter the degree and bullet symbols you mentioned, see the following line in the cheat sheet:
Backquote @ a A b or o — to enter å Å (Aring) • ° (degree)
The AutoHotKeys script uses Unicode hex values, not the Alt+nnnn system that Windows used on the numeric keypad. I think Backquote @ o is easier to remember to make a degree symbol than Alt+0176. I selected the “@” symbol for this key sequence because it is round, like the circular shapes of the Aring, bullet, and degree characters.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
AusJohn
AskWoody Plus
-
Rick Corbett
AskWoody_MVPXianAlbar
AskWoody PlusI have used Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (aka MSKLC) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102134) to program a similar set of dead keys / key-combinations.
MSKLC generates a Keyboard Layout setup/DLL that one then installs in the Language section of the Windows Settings. It works at the level of the keyboard and is thus accessible to all software.
Attached: source and documentation files.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
AusJohn
AskWoody Plus
Rick Corbett
AskWoody_MVPWould some kind soul be able to give me a couple of examples of how I can accomplish this?
I have difficulty remembering hotstrings so I use flyingDman‘s AutoHotkey script that displays a character map onscreen to select characters. I’ve highlit the two you mentioned:
I’ve attached the AHK script as a ZIP file in case of any issues with forum encoding. The AHK script is as follows:
var = ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔŒÕÖØÙÚÛÜßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïñòóôœõöøùúûüÿ¿¡«»§¶†‡•-–—™©®¢€¥££¤aß?de??????µ???p?s?t?f???G?T???SF?O???v-±8˜?=?==×·÷?'??‰°?ø?n?????¬???????????°0123456789°¹²³45678? f12:: w:=20, cnt := 14, arr := strsplit(var) gui, new gui, -caption gui, margin, 0,0 gui, font, s10 loop,% arr.count() { x := mod((a_index - 1),cnt) * w, y := floor((a_index - 1)/ cnt) * w gui, add, text, x%x% y%y% w%w% h%w% center vz%a_index% ginsert,% arr[a_index] } gui, show return insert: gui,submit send % arr[substr(A_GuiControl,2)] return esc:: exitapp
Note that once you run the script, F12 is used to invoke the character map GUI and ESC to dismiss the dialog. (Both these hotkeys can be changed.) The script can be used with Notepad, Word, etc… anywhere that accepts character input.
Basically, the first line of the script creates an array then this array is looped through to create the GUI. Amend the first line if you only need a few special characters.
Note: This script was written long before AutoHotkey 2.0 was released. I’m still using AutoHotkey 1.1.
Hope this helps…
ibe98765
AskWoody PlusWill Fastie
ManagerThere is an error in the column. Next to the “cheat sheet” image under the heading “The fix is here …”, a parenthetical states:
from a command line, enter shell:startup to open the Startup folder
The correct procedure is to enter shell:startup in the Windows Run dialog, which as we all know can be launched in two ways:
- Right-clicking the Start button and selecting Run from the menu, or
- Using the shortcut Winkey+R.
Then enter shell:startup and press Enter. The currently logged-in user’s startup folder will open, into which you can copy the .ahk script. If you wish to add the script for all users of the PC, enter shell:common startup instead.
This is an editing error on my part, for which I take full responsibility. The online version Brian’s column will be corrected in due course.
-
This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by
Will Fastie. Reason: Typo
-
AusJohn
AskWoody Plusenter shell:common statup instead.
Presumably that’s just a typo; I imagine it should be:
shell:common startup
1 user thanked author for this post.
Will Fastie
ManagerViewing 20 reply threads -

Plus Membership
Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.
AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments.
Get Plus!
Welcome to our unique respite from the madness.
It's easy to post questions about Windows 11, Windows 10, Win8.1, Win7, Surface, Office, or browse through our Forums. Post anonymously or register for greater privileges. Keep it civil, please: Decorous Lounge rules strictly enforced. Questions? Contact Customer Support.
Search Newsletters
Search Forums
View the Forum
Search for Topics
Recent Topics
-
I honestly can’t tell if this is a scam or not
by
Susan Bradley
4 hours, 58 minutes ago -
New Life For Ten Year Old DIY NAS Hardware
by
bbearren
11 minutes ago -
June 2023 Office non-Security updates have been released
by
PKCano
16 hours, 28 minutes ago -
Web Apps from Brave Browser
by
Gale
13 hours, 29 minutes ago -
Firefox 114 offering Secure DNS Options – does AT&T ISP Support?
by
Tex265
9 hours, 49 minutes ago -
macOS 14 Sonoma
by
Alex5723
13 hours, 16 minutes ago -
Just a fyi – I think I’ll skip on an Apple Vision Pro hardware section
by
Susan Bradley
19 hours, 13 minutes ago -
What’s wrong with Windows 11?
by
Ascaris
1 hour, 57 minutes ago -
Streaming an iPad to a standard TV
by
MrJimPhelps
11 hours, 40 minutes ago -
clone to make backup laptop
by
greenbergman
1 day, 19 hours ago -
Problems with sound and USB ports
by
StavRoss
1 day, 1 hour ago -
Can you use WUShowHide on Windows 11 version 21H2?
by
southieguy
1 day, 8 hours ago -
Can we control the changes to our operating systems?
by
Susan Bradley
4 hours, 32 minutes ago -
Watch out for fake ‘Windows Defender’ scare
by
B. Livingston
20 hours, 8 minutes ago -
Diagnostics and testing? Get it all done in a flash.
by
Ben Myers
11 hours, 42 minutes ago -
Dip your toe into Visio Online
by
Peter Deegan
1 day, 18 hours ago -
Updating Win 10 Pro 21H2 to 22H2
by
bsqrd
1 day, 16 hours ago -
Changing mouse pointer options.
by
Artie
1 day, 20 hours ago -
Desktop or Laptop? What’s your choice?
by
Susan Bradley
8 hours, 17 minutes ago -
Anyone use Auslogics Bitreplica
by
WSjcgc50
3 days, 6 hours ago -
Unleashing the Gaming Revolution: CrossOver Mac’s DirectX 12 Support Update!
by
Alex5723
3 days, 19 hours ago -
Defender’s Offline Scan Fails to Run
by
E Pericoloso Sporgersi
3 days, 1 hour ago -
Mouse problem : cannot grab a window without maximizing it
by
Andy M
1 day, 6 hours ago -
End of support for Cortana in Windows
by
Alex5723
2 days, 18 hours ago -
Microsoft is really missing an advertising trick
by
Sky
3 days, 18 hours ago -
New MOVEit Transfer zero-day mass-exploited in data theft attacks
by
Alex5723
4 days, 18 hours ago -
Windows 11 Insider Preview build 25381 released to Canary
by
joep517
4 days, 18 hours ago -
Authenticating Email Address
by
IreneLinda
18 hours, 28 minutes ago -
Confusion about password protecting a folder in W10
by
Cthru
4 days, 20 hours ago -
I broke my right arm yesterday
by
Alex5723
2 days, 21 hours ago
Recent blog posts
- June 2023 Office non-Security updates have been released
- Can we control the changes to our operating systems?
- Watch out for fake ‘Windows Defender’ scare
- Diagnostics and testing? Get it all done in a flash.
- Dip your toe into Visio Online
- Desktop or Laptop? What’s your choice?
- Beware of Google’s .ZIP domain and password-embedded URLs
- Longstanding feature requests, and their status
Key Links
Want to Advertise in the free newsletter? How about a gift subscription in honor of a birthday? Send an email to sb@askwoody.com to ask how.
Mastodon profile for DefConPatch
Mastodon profile for AskWoody
Home • About • FAQ • Posts & Privacy • Forums • My Account
Register • Free Newsletter • Plus Membership • Gift Certificates • MS-DEFCON Alerts
Copyright ©2004-2023 by AskWoody Tech LLC. All Rights Reserved.