Swap Control/Command keys in Windows?

Discussion in 'Parallels Desktop for Mac' started by josquin, Sep 21, 2006.

  1. josquin

    josquin Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    Does anyone know of a way to swap the Control and Command keys when within Windows? My fingers aren't smart enough to remember to press Command-C for copy when in OS X and Ctrl-C when in Windows. It would be great to do a little remap to make the switch back-and-forth a bit easier.

    Thanks!
     
  2. BenInBlack

    BenInBlack Pro

    Messages:
    372
    Ah, a man after my own heart.

    I had to resort to http://www.autohotkey.com/
    to solve this. it is free and runs auto on my windows startup

    I have ask Parallels for native keyboard support and dont fully understand why they don't do it.
    it's wierd, it flip/flops, if is set Mac to CMD=CTRL then it is CTRL=CMD in windows, and visa-versa.

    I have 20+ years of CTRL key, to ingrained in gray matter :)

    here is the script i use under autohotkey: LWin::Control
     
  3. josquin

    josquin Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    Awesome... I'll check it out. Thx much!
     
  4. josquin

    josquin Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    Works amazingly! I did the following:

    LWin::Control
    RWin::Control
    Alt::LWin
    Control::Alt

    Within Windows, these instructions change the command key to be control, the option key to be the window (start) key, and the control key to be alt.
     
  5. BenInBlack

    BenInBlack Pro

    Messages:
    372
    Ok, if you are testing the new Windows Vista, you can still use AutoHotKey, but DO NOT, and I repeat DO NOT install it in Program Files,

    Vista wont let you create or modify in there so the AutoHotKey.ini wont be created on install and you can't created it there.

    for now install it in a folder like c:\AutoHotKey

    I need to figure out, Window is getting serious on lock down of security in Vista
     
  6. backonmac

    backonmac Bit poster

    Messages:
    1
    Confused

    :confused:

    I thought there was support in Parallels for automatically mapping the the command-key to the control key when running a Windows VM?

    Is the only way to do this by using autohotkey?

    Thanks,
    Jason
     
  7. wtfk

    wtfk Bit poster

    Messages:
    5
    That's all great...in fact, I used KeyTweak to remap the keys so that the "Left windows" = control and "Context Menu" = control. The problem is, the Parallels program still wants to execute the command-keys for M, N, O, S, E, Q, G, L, >, < and I instead of letting them have their meaning in Windows. Of course, they DON'T have any meaning in Windows unless you remap them, but still, they should have figured someone would want to remap them.
     
  8. happyfunball

    happyfunball Bit poster

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    1
  9. karfel

    karfel Bit poster

    Messages:
    6
    As noted, there are many ways to swap the command and control keys (or whatever you prefer). I also used keytweak; it took a little experimentation, but once set it worked perfectly.

    Unfortunately the new version of Parallels (3036) broke this badly by hard-coding command-azxcv. A horrible horrible idea, as now you need to remember to arbitrarily switch between keys to do the same thing. :mad:

    For this reason, and this reason only, I have reverted to version 1970.

    Did anyone's method survive this change?
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2006
  10. albundy

    albundy Bit poster

    Messages:
    5
    You don't need to use the AutoHotKey.ini at all. The .ini is a default script that runs when you launch AutoHotKey directly. You should just be making script files and starting AHK with those.

    Save your script to a .ahk file, and drop that into your startup folder or double click it when you need it. That will launch an instance of AHK with just that script.

    You can also compile the .ahk file from the right click menu, and then it will run even without AHK installed.
     

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