Mapping Home and End keys does not work for Win8.1 VM in Parallels Desktop 9

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DaveHein

Bit poster
I'm running Build 9.0.24172 on Mavericks with a Windows 8.1 VM.

I was trying to map the OS X option+command+left-arrow key combination to the Windows Home key, and similarly option+command+right-arrow to the End key. It has exactly no effect -- no cursor position change, nothing. The key mapping is active -- I can tell because if I disable the mappings then Win8.1 then has some response to that key combo -- but it doesn't seem to be passing through the End or Home keys.

I have Parallels enabled in the Accessibility Security settings, and I have the Parallels preferences set to send system keystrokes _Always_ to the VM (though the behavior doesn't change if I make that conditional). The keyboard profile I'm using was based on the Generic (or empty) profile.

I'm stumped. I don't understand why the Home or End keys aren't being passed to Win8.1 (or aren't being recoginzed by Win8.1). Has anyone seen and solved this problem?

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Dave Hein
 
Workaround

I've found some 'natural' key combos that get what I want, at least from my Retina MacBook Pro keyboard; probably also from any Apple keyboard.

fn+leftArrow = Home
fn+rightArrow = End
fn+ctrl+leftArrow = Ctrl+Home
fn+ctrl+rightArrow = Ctrl+End
fn+upArrow = PgUp
fn+downArrow = PgDown

Still don't know why the Parallels mappings are not producing Home, End, PgUp or PgDown. I have a 'remote session' scheduled with Parallels support later today ... I'll report back after that.

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Dave Hein
 
I finally got a session with a support person. They could see the problem on my system but could not reproduce it on their test system. They suggested resetting the home directory permissions and user ACLs. I did that but no change in symptoms. So they want me to open a problem report, which I've done. If anything useful happens, I'll post it here.

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Dave Hein
 
Support responds; final recommendation

First level support couldn't help. They kicked it up to second level support who responded with this:

As we understand correctly you would like to use combinations ⌘+option+left arrow for Windows "Home" key and ⌘+option+right arrow for Windows "End" key, but after pressing these combinations nothing happens on Windows Virtual Machine side.

This is unable to set by design and it is preferable use another key maps for imitate Windows "Home" and "End" keys.

Every shortcut has the definite number of actions ('press' and 'relies'). When you send the shortcut to the Virtual Machine, it replaces the combination of keys completely. The replacing will be finished after all the shortcut-creating keys are released. When you send the shortcut using modifiers the native Windows sense of this modifiers is lost until you release all the buttons. In the other words you need to unpress all the shortcut-creating buttons to continue using them.

In order to apply Windows "Home" and "End" keys in Windows using Mac keyboard please use the following combinations:
- Fn + Left arrow for Windows "Home" key,
- Fn + Right arrow for Windows "End" key
Click to expand...

I'm not entirely certain what they mean. Perhaps they are saying that I cannot hold down option+command while doing multiple taps of an arrow key, that instead I have to press and release all three keys simultaneously. That doesn't seem to make a difference in my testing.

What I think is actually the case is that the arrow keys cannot be used successfully in shortcut mapping.

Regardless of the cause (bug or undocumented feature), I think that if you are using an Apple keyboard then Home, End, PgUp, PgDown cannot be mapped (as targets) to any key combination using arrow keys and must be produced using these native Apple fn key combinations:

fn+leftArrow = Home
fn+rightArrow = End
fn+ctrl+leftArrow = Ctrl+Home
fn+ctrl+rightArrow = Ctrl+End
fn+upArrow = PgUp
fn+downArrow = PgDown

So my keyboard mapping for Windows systems is now the "Generic" profile, which contains no mapped shortcuts.

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Dave Hein
 
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