Lenovo Helix End/Insert Keys Swapped

I recently switched from the Dell-exclusive club of laptops over the past 15 years to a ThinkPad. Specifically, the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix. It was a unit I have been waiting years for to check all the right boxes.

I haven’t been privy to the IBM/Lenovo keyboard wars. I have always heard great things about the IBM ThinkPad keyboard. Well, it seems this Lenovo Helix came with the newer style of only one row of Function keys + hardware-specific keys (volume, brightness, etc). Fine by me as I figured out how to lock in the Function-mode-always (a BIOS option).

But now I had a serious problem when coding/writing long documents…

The End/Insert Key was Swapped

Why in the hell would the End/Insert key swap functions when I lock in the Function-key mode of the F1-F12 keys?

This was almost a deal breaker. Only after crawling the Lenovo forums (a great place to find hacks for Lenovo) did I stumble onto a Lenovo ThinkPad keyboard hack to reverse the key functions. It actually remaps the Windows keyboard layout in the registry, an age-old trick I forgot about over a decade ago!

Swapping the End/Insert key functions

Instead of supplying a download of a .reg file, which I am not even sure that GitHub supports, I’ll explain the instructions on how to create your own .reg file.

• Right-click on your desktop, select New -> Text Document
• Copy and Paste the following into this document, letter by letter.

1
2
3
4

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,52,e0,4f,e0,4f,e0,52,e0,00,00,00,00

• Save the file as lenovo-helix-end-insert-key-swap.reg
• Double-click it to merge it into your registry. You will need to be logged in as an Administrator.
• Reboot and you’re done.

Now, the function of the End/Insert will be swapped.

Also, devoted fans of the previous Thinkpad keyboard: you may want to take your anger here.