Article ID: 138354 - Last Review: February 22, 2007 - Revision: 2.2

Cannot log on after changing keyboard settings

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SYMPTOMS

You have configured your U.S. version of Windows NT with a foreign language keyboard layout and you have extended characters in your password. After changing your password, you cannot log on. You can only log on using ALT key combinations to create the extended characters in your password.

CAUSE

You installed the U.S. version of Windows NT and the U.S. keyboard is the default keyboard.

NOTE: Keyboard settings are user specific. Although you may select a foreign language keyboard, at logon time (no user is logged on yet) the default keyboard settings are used. So at logon time no country-specific extended characters are available.

RESOLUTION

If you want to continue to use a password that has extended characters, you must change the default keyboard settings in the registry as follows:

Windows NT 3.51:
  1. Run Registry Editor (REGEDT32.exe).
  2. From the HKEY_USERS subtree, go to the following key:
    \.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout
  3. Change the value "Active" to the appropriate string. For example, the string 00000407 defines German keyboard layout and 00000409 defines U.S. keyboard layout. (See "More Information" for a list of language IDs.)
An alternative solution is to use the User Profile Editor to modify the complete system default profile by saving the current user profile information as the system default profile.

Windows NT 4.0/Windows 2000:
  1. Run Registry Editor (REGEDT32.exe).
  2. From the HKEY_USERS subtree, go to the following key:
    \.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload
  3. Change the value for the following entry to contain the keyboard layout that you want to have avilable at logon. This example would set the default keyboard layout to Japanese:
    \.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload
    "1" REG_SZ = "0411"
    NOTE: Beginning with Windows NT 4.0, the first keyboard layout in the list of available layouts is used by default. This behavior replaces the "Active" value that was used in previous versions of Windows NT.

MORE INFORMATION

The default settings in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT are also used when you define a new user.

The following are the language IDs that are supported by Windows NT 3.51: 
      00000402  =  "Bulgarian"
      0000041a  =  "Croatian"
      00000405  =  "Czech"
      00000406  =  "Danish"
      00000813  =  "Dutch (Belgian)"
      00000413  =  "Dutch (Standard)"
      00000409  =  "English (American)"
      00000c09  =  "English (Australian)"
      00000809  =  "English (British)"
      00001009  =  "English (Canadian)"
      00001809  =  "English (Irish)"
      00001409  =  "English (New Zealand)"
      0000040b  =  "Finnish"
      0000080c  =  "French (Belgian)"
      00000c0c  =  "French (Canadian)"
      0000040c  =  "French (Standard)"
      0000100c  =  "French (Swiss)"
      00000c07  =  "German (Austrian)"
      00000407  =  "German (Standard)"
      00000807  =  "German (Swiss)"
      00000408  =  "Greek"
      0000040d  =  "Hebrew"
      0000040e  =  "Hungarian"
      0000040f  =  "Icelandic"
      00000410  =  "Italian (Standard)"
      00000810  =  "Italian (Swiss)"
      00000414  =  "Norwegian (Bokmal)"
      00000814  =  "Norwegian (Nynorsk)"
      00000415  =  "Polish"
      00000416  =  "Portuguese (Brazil)"
      00000816  =  "Portuguese (Portugal)"
      00000418  =  "Romanian"
      00000419  =  "Russian"
      0000041b  =  "Slovak"
      00000424  =  "Slovenian"
      0000080a  =  "Spanish (Mexican)"
      00000c0a  =  "Spanish (Modern Sort)"
      0000040a  =  "Spanish (Traditional Sort)"
      0000041d  =  "Swedish"
      0000041f  =  "Turkish"
For Windows NT 4.0 and later, the following registry key tree contains a listing of keyboard layout codes:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts
APPLIES TO
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.5
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition
Keywords: 
kbenv kbprb KB138354
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