Caps lock gets confused

[josephabennett]

If the caps lock key is accidentally pressed, and you start typing in a document like Microsoft Word, which will automatically turn off caps lock if it detects that you accidentally turned it on (i.e. you start typing the word "tHE", and MS Word fixes that to "The"), from then on your caps lock is "inverted" in Windows.

In other words, you have to keep the caps lock key pressed while using a Microsoft window, then turn it back off when going back to a Mac window.

 

[joem]

Is this a Parallels problem, a Microsoft problem or a feature?

 

[misterjangles]

i notice this same problem. my work-around is to just repeat the mistake. in other words, go in to windows - turn caps lock ON (which actually will be opposite of what the keyboard light says it should be) then start typing a sentence in the wrong case "tHE" (or whatever you like). Word will *fix* the typo and caps lock will then invert itself again - which will be back to normal.

(wow, that paragraph probably reads like i've been smoking something!)

pretty weird, but easy enough to workaround for now.

 

[josephabennett]

I classify this as a Parallels problem because it seems that the virtual keyboard driver they have is not recognizing a change in caps lock, when it comes from someplace else other than hitting the caps lock key itself.

This is a feature of Windows, where an application like MS Word is communicating to the keyboard driver by some mechanism that "hey, the user looks like they really didn't want the caps lock key on". On a regular PC, this works. In the VM itself, it is working, but the real, physical caps lock key in the Mac is not changing, and thus, OSX and Windows are now out of sync as to what its state is.

I have not been able to reproduce the "doing it again" mechanism described in a previous post, where you do something wrong with they keyboard again, and it fixes itself. But, I will try again.