Fixing Virtual PC Keyboard Lockup

Lately I’ve heard from a lot of people using Virtual PC that their keyboard suddenly stops working inside the VM.

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

• Keyboard stops working altogether.
• Keyboard freaks out (Ctrl key stuck).
• Keyboard and mouse lock up.

The first issue is the one I hear the most, and which someone recently managed to trigger on one of my VPCs.

It’s quite hard to reproduce, if possible at all, but it seems to be triggered most by switching between full screen and windowed mode.

But enough chatting, here’s 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! :)

Solutions for the other issues are apparently:

• Freaking: a bug in VPC apparently doesn’t release the Ctrl key when you use the AltGr key to simulate Ctrl+Alt (when switching to full screen?). In practice, Windows sees the Ctrl key as held down. Rumored solutions are to press Ctrl inside the VPC, and/or 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 likely a fix for you, but you’ll have to search a bit.