How to turn on/off Keyboard NumLock on bootup in Windows

I recently rebuilt my home server machine to run Windows 7.

I attached my ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint to the machine (love these keyboards – the feel and usability of a ThinkPad keyboard on a desktop!!), but after setup, I found that I was having difficulty logging in with the username and password I had specified.

I did also notice at one point that I was getting strange characters when I typed, which I quickly realised was the NumLock on the keyboard being activated. Unfortunately, there is no NumLock indicator light on the keyboard (designed to be used with a ThinkPad, which displays NumLock status on the screen), so I couldn’t tell whether it was active or not.

A bit of experimentation at login and I found that the NumLock was being enabled by default on my new box – and a search of the BIOS settings didn’t turn up any options there for disabling it.

A quick Google search found some discussions about the issue, which identified a registry setting you can set to adjust this.

Steps to adjust:

A) run regedit

B) navigate to: HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard

C) Adjust the value of InitialKeyboardIndicators to one of the following values:

0 – Turn all indicators Off (NumLock, CapsLock, ScrollLock)
1 – Turn CapsLock On
2 – Turn NumLock On
3 – Turn CapsLock and NumLock On
4 – Turn ScrollLock On
5 – Turn CapsLock and ScrollLock On
6 – Turn NumLock and ScrollLock On
7 – Turn all indicators On (NumLock, CapsLock, ScrollLock)

D) reboot

In my case, the registry entry was set to some high value, which seems to have triggered NumLock on. I reset it to 0 and it now works as expected – no NumLock at bootup.

Note that this entry can also be set on a per-user basis.

References:

• Want to set ‘num lock’ to be on and active at Windows 7 Log-in screen on new HP G60-530US laptop
• How do I enable the NUM LOCK key for the logon screen?