How to enable numlock on boot for Dell Precision 7510

Does anyone have any idea about this?

Jim

I also have a 7510 that has never booted with the numlock key on. I've tried everything I can think of including updating to the latest BIOS. I have confirmed in the BIOS that this option to enable numlock at boot is checked.

OHAYA100, did you ever get yours to boot with numlock enabled?

Anybody else have any suggestions?

We now have 4 of the Precision 7510's in our fleet, and they all have the same problem.  Updated to the latest BIOS and still nothing.  Called Dell and created a case with them, and they claimed there was something wrong with our image (even though this should be handled at the hardware level) and that "nobody else is having the issue".  Anyone find a fix for this?

I sent the following email to a dell support guy that was extremely helpful:

****
I received your emails and found them very interesting, particularly those about the registry edits.

 I think it may have been in those that I read something related to the windows login and someone saying something about their windows login password consisting partially of numbers and that was part of the problem.

 So indeed, I changed my windows password to not have any numbers in it, and when the computer started up the numlock button had been turned on so the number keypad worked!

 So the problem is, the numlock enabled at startup in the BIOS means that after the computer has booted to the desktop the numlock will have been enabled. But when booting to the password prompt, the numlock has not yet been enabled. L

 Any ideas on how we can get it enabled before it gets to the desktop? I’d like it enabled at the password screen because my password that I normally use has numbers in it.
****

The bottom line is that it does boot with numlock turned on as long as you are either

1. bypassing the password prompt and booting straight to the desktop
   or
2. not having numbers in your password that require the numlock to be on at that point

I am using Windows 7 Professional and I've never experienced this problem before with a laptop, and I've had many with Windows 7 and they all had numbers in the password so numlock was enabled before the password prompt.

Ha!  Well, thanks for the reply.  That was truly helpful!  I never even thought of the idea that it's being controlled at the OS level now and not at the hardware level.  Global policy requires at least one number in our passwords, so we'd always just enabled numlock before ever logging in!  This is the second or third thing I've found with the new BIOS's on Dell's latest fleet of laptops that should be (and always was in the past) handled at the hardware level that is now left to the OS.  :-(

Finally, this post supports what Lisa pointed out:

www.thewindowsclub.com/numlock-startup-windows-7-8

Thank you so much Lisa! I guess I should have followed what the gentleman from Dell told me to look into because I am sure it was this same thing. I don't remember why I thought it would not work.

My only advice to people is that the path might not look exactly like Lisa's above (I think mine was USERS.DEFAULT...) and also note that mine was already set correctly for the first entry she showed above but not for the second, and finally, note that you may have to find this InitialKeyboardIndicators value in other spots as well, but I'm just speculating regarding that.

Thanks again Lisa. I spent  hours on this in the past. That was very simple!

You're so welcome. I had also spent quite a lot of time on this issue as well. Thanks!

This is a beautiful, beautiful thing, Lisa!  Thanks so much!  As much as I hate doing registry hacks and would appreciate Dell actually recognizing there is a problem and fixing it, this was WELL worth it, and my users sincerely thank you.