Fixing Virtual PC Keyboard Lockup

Lately I hear about a lot of people using VPC that their keyboard suddenly stops working inside VPC.

There are a different number of keyboard issues I’ve heard of so far:

• Keyboard stops working all together.
• Keyboard freaks out. (CTRL key stuck)
• Keyboard and mouse lock up.

The first issue is the one I hear the most, and which someone managed to perform on one of my VPC’s lately.

It’s quite hard to reproduce, if able to at all, but apparently it feels to trigger the most from fullscreen/windowed switching.

But, no more chatting, the (very simple) solution:

Lock and unlock the host computer. Problem fixed, keyboard working again.

The first time someone had a locked keyboard again, I tried this, and it worked! :)

A solution for the other issues are apparently:

• Freaking: A bug in VPC apparently prevents to let go out the CTRL key when you use the AltGr key to simulate CTRL+ALT (when switching to fullscreen?). Which means in practice Windows sees the CTRL key as being kept down. Rumored solutions are to press CTRL inside the VPC, or/and to use your Right CTRL to do special VPC operations instead of AltGr.
• Keyboard and mouse lock up: Apparently there's a hotfix somewhere out there, or at least one exists but has to be requested. I remember it being mentioned somewhere, the only comfort I can offer is that there is hope there is a fix for you, but you'll have to search a bit.