break key alternative

pgainc1,

Try reading THIS THREAD, near the bottom.

Rick

Paul,

Start, type

osk

Hit enter look at the On Screen keyboard and see if your system has a break key. Mine does not. Will the pause button work?

Rick

Thanks for your suggestion. I read and tried these already and unfortunately was not successful. This keyboard has "key brightness" for the fn + f6 key and "increase volume" for the fn + f12 key so these don't translate for control-break. There is no num-lock or scroll-lock keys on this keyboard. I can't believe that Dell would sell a product with no alternative to this.

Paul

Thanks Rick. Using the on screen keyboard and ctrl-pause seems to work as ctrl-break. Is there a way that I can program the physical keys on my keyboard to do this?

Paul,

Try reading THIS ARTICLE from Microsoft. Maybe you can find something HERE that works.

Rick

Try:

[Ctrl]-[Fn]-[F12] or [Ctrl]-[Fn]-[F5]

This works on some Dell laptop models.

I had exactly the same problem - My DELL Vostro 3550 has no Pause/Break key ... but I need one in order to operate the software that we wrtie correctly.

Eventually I managed to get this working by adding a new KEY to the Registry. (I am running Win7 Professional)

1) clcik the START, then type REGEDIT into the search box. This will start the registry editor.

2) Explore the Registry, expanding each element
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
 -SYSTEM
   -Current Control Set
      - Control
           - Keyboard Layout

Click on the Scancode Map, and EDIT the key values to match that shown below.
i.e. to have values of  :  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,46,e0,44,00,00,00,00,00

Once Done you will need to re-boot your laptop, but after that you can use as the pause/Break Key.
              

(Option)
If you want you can copy/Paste the text below into a *.txt file.
Save the file onto your desktop and rename as New_Reg_Key.reg      because of the *.reg extension you can then double_click the file to add the new registry key.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,46,e0,44,00,00,00,00,00

I hope this is some use to others. :-)

Thanks Gorchard, that's excellent, as was your explanation of how to do it.

I tried this on my Dell mini-9 netbook with Windows 8 Consumer Preview and it worked fine. My mini-9 is rather short of keys, so this is very useful.

This Microsoft page shows a bit more detail on how to configure the Scancode Map and how to map keys: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/gg463447.aspx

This now opens up the possibility of getting a Dell laptop again... Dell should pay you commission!

Thanks,

Tim

two and a half years later, this was very enlightening, but not so useful. I'm hoping you or someone else here can extend our communal wisdom. I am on a new dell xps 1820 with a wireless keyboard and Windows 8.1. When I follow your instructions all the way down the Registry, when I get to keyboard layout there is no pre-existing scancode map. I created a new binary, following your screenshot, and called it scancode map. But when I tried to enter the value under Data, the little window that popped up will not let me type in the string of numbers you gave us. After 10 or 12 spaces, it jumps down to a new line, and prepends that line with 0008. I cannot make a small 'e', they are always capitalized. 

Now what? Any ideas? 

By the way, once this does work, what happens to the pre-existing functionality of the F10 key? How does this change impact whatever software might have used it?

Thanks.

First the good news:

To get the "Scancode Map" line in the registry, paste the following into a text file with a ".reg" extension (use Notepad):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,46,e0,44,00,00,00,00,00

Note that no matter what version of regedit you have, the first line in the file must be as shown and a blank line must be after it. Then just double-click the file name and it will get imported into the registry automatically.

Then you can use Regedit to modify the binary data.

Now the bad news:

I have a Dell 2350 All-In-One which doesn't have a Break key and I have not been able to get this to work (with Visual Basic 6). The Dell uses keys F7-F12 as media control keys. I tried mapping to F6, which does not have any other controls mapped to it, but it still didn't work, so I am still without a Break key.

I have read posts online in which people say this method has worked for them, so I don't know if it is just a problem with Windows 8.1 or with Visual  Basic 6 or with the Dell. If anyone can get it to work, I would love to hear about it.

I discovered that Ctrl+Fn+B worked. (B for Break)

No need to edit registry settings.