31 March2019

Better Ways to Work with the Registry

The Registry is a scary topic because it seems mysterious. In fact, it's a carefully ordered collection of information about how parts of the operating system function, settings for the operating system's thousands of options, and information about installed applications. Editing the Registry can render the system unusable if done wrong, but when edits are made with care, they can make the system operate the way you want it to and solve problems.

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Eliminate or Move Keys on the Keyboard

Keyboards contain keys that you might not ever use intentionally. The Caps Lock key is a prime example for me. Accidentally pressing Caps Lock CONVERTS YOUR WORDS TO SHOUTS. And who wants that? I've described how a relatively simple Registry edit can disable Caps Lock, but many people are understandably reluctant to tread among Registry keys. Well, there's a better way.

A clever little utility called SharpKeys can handle the Registry edits for you and it doesn't even need to be installed. Instead, you can just download the Zip file, unpack it, and run SharpKeys. There is also an installable version in an MSI file, but there's no reason to install it.

When you start SharpKeys, Windows will display a User Access Control warning because the program will make changes to the Registry. The first time I ran the program, I was happy to see that it already knew about the changes I had made using manual Registry edits. I had previously disabled both Caps Lock and Scroll Lock. If you see an error message after launching SharpKeys, that's probably because Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 isn't installed. This can be obtained from Microsoft's website. Make sure that you obtain a version that's supported by the operating you have installed. SharpKeys works with Windows NT and later, but not with Windows 95 or Windows 98.

You may want to do something that SharpKeys can't do, so let's take a get those out of the way now..

• SharpKeys can't swap two keys with each other. In other words, you can't assign the Shift function to Caps Lock and the Caps Lock function to Shift. If you need to do something like that, you'll have to edit the Registry manually.
• SharpKeys isn't able to map a multiple key function to a single key. For example, you can't map Ctrl-Z to F1 even if you can think of a use case where that would make sense.
• SharpKeys can't map mouse clicks to a key. A mouse click is not a key, after all.
• SharpKeys cannot map special hardware keys to other keys. Some keyboards have built-in keys for volume, power control, and such.
• SharpKeys doesn't allow key mapping on a per-user basis. Changes apply to all users.
• Most important, perhaps, SharpKeys can't protect you from making errors. If you make a change that renders the computer unusable, you're on your own. The developer says "I would think you could get into Safe Mode and remove the Scancode Map registry key, but you'll be on your own. Having said this, please be careful and you're using SharpKeys at your own risk!"

With that warning out of the way, let's see what SharpKeys can do for you.

The most common use is probably to eliminate a key that you don't want. For me, those keys are Caps Lock and Scroll Lock because I want to avoid accidentally typing several sentences in ALL CAPS (and I usually don't look at the screen when I'm typing) and because Scroll Lock creates a condition I don't like in spreadsheet applications.

If your computer has two keyboards, it's important to be sure that the key you think you're mapping is the key you're really mapping. Many people who use notebook computers attach full-size keyboards to them and SharpKeys can see both of them. This may result in a bit of confusion. It sees the Pause|Break key on my full keyboard as Num Lock and identifies the Num Lock key as the Euro symbol (€).

SharpKeys may also report a lot of "unknown" keys. There are hundreds of keyboard models and many of them include extra keys that don't use the standardized scan codes that apply to common keys. The easiest way to identify the key you'd like to change is clicking the Type Key button on the key mapping dialog box and then pressing the key. SharpKeys will select the appropriate value and fill it in. If you want to remap either the Left Alt or Right Alt key, though, pressing the key doesn't work. You'll need to find it in the list of keys. You'll find both in the "Special" section: Left Alt (00_38) and Right Alt (E0_38).

The key you want to map is shown in the left panel and the key you want to map it to is set in the right panel. The top option is Turn Key Off.

After defining all of the mappings you want to use, press the Write to Registry button. You'll then need to reboot the computer so that the Registry will be re-read to enable the new mappings.

If you've created several mappings that you'd like to use on another computer, click Save Keys to write a file. Take that file and the SharpKeys executable to the other machine, run the application, use the Load Keys button to import the settings, and then click Write to Registry on the second machine.

You can download the application from the author's website.

Sometimes You Really Need to Edit the Registry, Though

Windows 10 includes a perfectly usable Registry Editor and the most recent update (version 1809) added some features that make the editor even better. Even so, you might want to take a look at Kurt Zimmerman's RegCool utility.

RegCool has features that RegEdit (the built-in Registry editor) doesn't have.
The built-in RegEdit is on the left and RegCool is on the right.

• When you make a change, you can undo it and redo it and the history can be saved to disk and then reloaded at startup, so the undo and redo function persists following a system restart.
  
• If there's a Registry key that you visit frequently, add it to a list of favorites and you can get there with a single click instead of having to click through "HKLM - System - Current Control Set - Control - Keyboard Layout" to get to the location where keyboard mappings are stored.
• Some Registry keys are locked because the system or an application has exclusive use of it. This is for your own protection, but if you know what you're doing and you really need to edit a key that you don't have permission to edit, RegCool lets you take control.
• RegShot is a function that allows the user to take a snapshot of the Registry and then compare it with another Registry. This could be an older version of the computer's Registry or a Registry from another computer.
• Cut, copy, and paste functions allow for copying or moving a registry entry from one hive to another. Use this one with extreme caution.
  
• As with other databases, deleted entries take up space until the Registry is defragmented and RegCool offers a function to do this. Be sure to use the backup function first, just in case, and be prepared to reboot the computer when the process completes.

The developer is German and sometimes you'll find German words in the program's interface and in the documentation. Usually these are easy to decode -- "und" in place of "and" or Undo and Redo shown as "Strg+Z" and "Strg+Y" instead of "Ctrl-Z" and "Ctrl-Y". "Strg" is the abbreviation for "Steuerung" (SHTY-er-ung) on a German keyboard just as "Ctrl" is the abbreviation for "Control" on a US keyboard.

You can download RegCool from the developer's website.

Short Circuits

Computers with Asus Motherboards Are at Risk

Both Motherboard and TechCrunch are reporting that hundreds of thousands of computers that are powered by Asus motherboards have been compromised by malware pushed out by Asus. Both say that the flaws were discovered by Kaspersky Labs in January. Asus finally acted this week to warn users.

The reports say that the Asus Live Update application was compromised by hackers who used an Asus signing certificate to place a modified version of the tool on Asus update servers. Although hundreds of thousands of computers are affected, it appears that the malware was closely targeted at approximately 600 machines worldwide. The targeting was done by scanning for the computer's MAC (media access control) address.

TechCrunch says that Symantec has confirmed the report by Kaspersky Labs and Motherboard reports that the signing certificates are still in use and notes that at least 13,000 computers operated by Symantec's customers were infected with the malware. The Motherboard article quotes Kaspersky's Costin Raiu, who says the attack is unusual: "The filtering of targets in a surgical manner by their MAC addresses is one of the reasons it stayed undetected for so long. If you are not a target, the malware is virtually silent." So unless you own of the approximately 600 machines targeted in the attack, the malware won't harm you.

So far, there's been no indication from anyone about who owns the targeted computers. Clearly this was a highly sophisticated attack and one that Asus doubtless should have made public when they became aware of it in January or earlier. This week, after the fecal matter made contact with the rotary air impeller, the company shifted into high gear and pushed out an update for the live update application. Asus also sent out a news release that said the new version of Live Update has "multiple security verification mechanisms to prevent any malicious manipulation in the form of software updates or other means." Asus says it is also now using "an enhanced end-to-end encryption mechanism."

There's a utility that users can run to see if their computers are affected. It's available on the Asus website. Asus is based in Taiwan is is the 5th largest PC vendor based on unit sales. In 2008, Asus was found to be shipping laptop computers that contained cracked, unlicensed software. In 2016, the US Federal Trade Commission accused Asus of failing to fix security problems with their routers. Perhaps there is a trend here.

Do You Believe Any of these High-Tech Myths?

Do more pixels mean better pictures? Given the camera industry's emphasis on pixels since the very beginning, it's not surprising that 86% of the people surveyed by HighSpeedInternet.com believe this is true. Some of the other myths that a lot of people believe are more surprising.

The results of the survey are in a blog post on the HighSpeedInternet site and it cites several common myths. As for cameras, the blog post says that "a camera with more megapixels can take pictures with higher resolution, but that doesn't necessarily mean they’re better quality." There's a lot more to it than that. The blog points out that a poor quality lens will result in a bad image no mater how many pixels there are. To that, I would add these considerations: The ability to shoot raw images and the sensor's dynamic range at a minimum. Whether it's a cell phone or an actual camera, it's essential to look beyond pixel count.

More than half of us (52%) seem to think that charging a mobile phone overnight will ruin the battery and a like number believe that smart phone manufacturers deliberately slow older models when they release new ones.

• Overcharging batteries can cause them to fail, but manufacturers now build charging systems that recognize when the battery is fully charged and stop charging it, so stop waking up in the middle of the night to take your phone out of its charger.
• As for slowing older phone models, Samsung and Apple were both fined for doing this in Italy. Whether it was intentional or not is questionable. The slowdowns usually occurred following an operating system update that needed more resources than the hardware could supply. Ideally, manufacturers should limit updates so that they are delivered only to the phones that can truly support them.

About one third of us think that airport X-ray machines will wipe computer or phone memory (31%) or that computers must be shut down every night to avoid malfunctions (30%). Both are nonsense.

• X-ray machines in airports could fog film, but they have no effect on digital memory. A super-strong magnet might cause a problem with a computer's disk drive, if it uses magnetic platters, but the devices we travel with increasingly have solid-state drives that won't be affected.
• There's no point in shutting a computer down at night and never was. Most failures occur during power-up and a computer than runs continuously eliminates most start-ups. The argument about which is better goes all the way back to the early days of desktop computers.

The post says 17% of us think that Macs are immune from malware. That's simply not true and it never has been. Macs still have a much smaller market share than Windows machines, but targeted (spear) phishing attempts are often tailored for Apple computers because they're popular among managers in large businesses.

Sometimes it's a good idea to check the things we know because sometimes what we "know" isn't accurate.

Connecting Paper to a Computer

Adobe and Moleskine have introduced the Moleskine Paper Tablet. It connects to Illustrator, part of Adobe's Creative Cloud. Drawing on the tablet turns sketches on paper into drawings in Illustrator. This requires the Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse.

Why? Not everyone likes drawing on a plastic tablet or screen. Some tablets and nibs have been modified so that they provide an approximation of the tactile sense of drawing on paper, but only a real pen on real paper fully captures the feel of pen on paper. Moleskine says that their research shows that even those who use digital devices often start with pen on paper and then have to re-draw their work on a digital device.

Drawings from the paper tablet become digital files that the artist can enhance, color, and texture in Illustrator. Both the pen and the paper in the notebook are special. Each page has two symbols that trigger actions. One turns on the simultaneous drawing mode within Illustrator and the other triggers the save function that writes the current file to the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Users can work solely on paper and connect their output to Illustrator CC later or they can have marks made on paper be mirrored simultaneously in Illustrator on a Windows PC or Mac.

This isn't the first time Adobe has worked with Moleskine. The first effort was a free Moleskine for Creative Cloud mobile app that used special page markings on companion smart notebooks to process the image as a JPG file before converting it into an SVG file. The new Creative Cloud Connected system creates vector art directly.

The tablets are available in several sizes. The large (5"x8¼") tablet sells for about $30 but is often discounted to less than $10. The pens, however, cost $180. Refills for the pens are less than $1 each. This isn't something that you'll want to buy for doodling, but commercial artists who like to start a project on paper and then have to take the time to re-draw their work digitally are likely to feel that it's a worthwhile expense.

Whether you pronounce Moleskine as "MOLE-skin" or "mol-eh-SKEEN-eh" may depend on your knowledge of Italian. Moleskine ("mol-eh-SKEEN-eh") is the Italian pronunciation, but many in English speaking countries use ("MOLE-skin") an Anglo pronunciation. The company is headquartered in Milan and it manufactures luxury notebooks and stationery.

More information at on the Moleskine website.