Lenono ThinkPad Keyboard Customizer Utility for Windows 7

Applies to
Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad keyboard with Previous/Next page buttons

Author
Lenovo

FileSize
2.60 MB

Description

Many IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad users are looking for a way to disable the Previous/Next page buttons located near the Page Up/Down/Left/Right buttons. Often they mistakenly pressed the Previous/Next buttons and lost whatever unsaved information they have typed on a webpage.

There is no hardware based solution to disable these two button, unlike the wireless network on/off switch. Unless you want to pry open and remove the buttons but I doubt you want to do that. Luckily Lenovo has come out with an utility to easily disabled the buttons.

Called ThinkPad Keyboard Customizer Utility, it is available in Windows 2000, Windows XP and the latest is for Windows Vista. So what about Windows 7? I tried to googling around as well as search on Lenovo website but did not find any version for Windows 7.

Here is what I have found out. I happened to own a Thinkpad X201i notebook using Windows 7 Professional 64bit and I have tried to download and installed it. The utility worked perfectly under Windows 7, at least I can disable the Previous/Next page buttons.

By the way the correct terms for the two offending buttons are "Browser Back Key" and "Browser Forward Key". Beside disabling these two keys, the utility also allow more customization of your ThinkPad keyboard:

1. Customized key assignments of special keys, such as Windows(R) key, application key and Volume Up/Down control.
2. Customized External keyboard key assignment such as Volume Up/Down, Mute, Thinkpad key (the large blue key near to F4), Standby, Hibernate, Wireless Radio Control and others.
3. Key sensitivity. Set the duration of key press to reduce the accidental activation of a key.
4. Assignment of special character input using a combination of First Key and Second Key. Now we can type Euro sign, Pound, Japanese Yen easily using a combination key.

Installation Steps

1. Download and run 7kkd03ww.exe
2. ThinkPad Keyboard Customizer Utility - InstallShield Wizard will prompt to save the extracted setup file to a folder. Default is "C:\DRIVERS\WIN\KEYCUSTM"
3. Go to "C:\DRIVERS\WIN\KEYCUSTM" and run Setup.exe
4. The setup program will try to install this new utility into the default installation path "C:\Program Files (x86)\ThinkPad\Utilities"
5. You will be prompted to restart your PC. Save all your important works before doing so.