Windows 7 / Getting Started

Enabling Num Lock by Default

If you have a password that has both numbers and letters and you frequently use the number pad to enter part of your password. I cannot count the number of times that I started to type my password and was then presented with a logon error telling me that my password was incorrect. I would sit there staring at the screen for a second before I realized that Num Lock on my keyboard was not on.

This is a great hack for every desktop computer with a full-size keyboard and a separate number pad. Turning on Num Lock by default on a laptop is not a good idea because most laptops do not usually have a separate number pad. Enabling this feature on a laptop will result in almost half your keyboard functioning as the number pad, and you would be much better off using the numbers instead of the letters. To get started, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Start menu, type regedit, and press Enter.
  2. When the Registry Editor loads, navigate through HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Control Panel, and Keyboard.
  3. Locate the InitialKeyboardIndicators entry, right-click it, and select Modify. To enable Num Lock, enter 2 into the box. If you want to disable it, enter 80000000 into the box with the Base set to Hexadecimal (80000000 is the hexadecimal equivalent of 2147483648 which is the system default value).
  4. Then click OK to save the changes.

If you are on a laptop and you attempted to enable Num Lock - even though I told you not to - and need to fix your system, repeat the preceding directions but replace the value of InitialKeyboardIndicators with 80000000 to disable the feature.

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In this tutorial:

  1. Customizing the Startup
  2. Customizing the Logon Screen
  3. Changing User Pictures
  4. Hiding Users on the Logon Screen
  5. Clearing the Last User Logon
  6. Changing the Logon Screen Screensaver
  7. Displaying a Security Message
  8. Enabling Num Lock by Default
  9. Changing the Logon Screen Background