NUM Locks not on from sleep/log-in and won’t stay on

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I have an Acer Aspire laptop with Windows 8.1 and the NUM Locks would always be off. When restarting the computer, returning from sleep, returning from Lock Screen, and boot up from shutdown, the NUM Locks were off and one had to press the NUM Lock key to turn it on. Since I use the 10-key often, this was annoying. After turning on the NUM Lock key, while using the computer it would randomly go off, and I did not press the NUM Lock key! Searching the internet had various fixes and some worked partially. I have been researching this on and off for years and it is a problem dating back to 2015. Even people with window 10 were having this issue.
The fix finally came to me recently with setting 3 items. It takes all three to make it totally work correctly.

1) Turn off Fast Start

2) Change the registry key HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard
Change the value of InitialKeyboardIndicators to 80000002

Note: there is a different entry needed for Windows 10. The 80000002 appears to be for Windows 8.1.

3) Disable Acer Launch Manager by disabling the service and Scheduled Task Library called “Launch Manager”.

Doing these 3 items finally fixed my annoying problem and has been working properly for days.

This is posted to help anyone with this odd NUM Lock being off problem.

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haven’t had an issue with Win8.1 numlock. I usually (during setup) switch numlock on then immediately log off/ log in and it just works. Thanks for your observations.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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had a slightly different angle on this, had a asus laptop where numlock would get turned on at every reboot(it is a 14″ laptop, so doesnt have a separate number pad, which means that half the keyboard types numbers by default, which is very annoying) . I tried all the above, nothing worked. ended up writing a script kicked off by a scheduled task that runs at startup and at log on for this, to turn num lock off if it is detected as being on.

script is below. it only seems to work after log on though, but i cant be bothered to work out why as i have spent hours on this and it works enough for me.

if([console]::NumberLock) { $w = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell; $w.SendKeys(‘{NUMLOCK}’); }

if you want to do the reverse, use

if(-not [console]::NumberLock){ $w = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell; $w.SendKeys(‘{NUMLOCK}’); }

i also kick off a registry file from the same task to set the values in the registry as they get overwritten every time. i dont think this actually achieves very much but as i had it i thought i would run it anyway. your S- number may well be different to mine, so make sure you change it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard] “InitialKeyboardIndicators”=”2147483648”

[HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard] “InitialKeyboardIndicators”=”2147483648”

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Control Panel\Keyboard] “InitialKeyboardIndicators”=”2147483648”

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1658153221-431003928-1463442403-1002\Control Panel\Keyboard] “InitialKeyboardIndicators”=”2147483648”

i got the code for the powershell script from here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41234687/how-to-check-if-numlock-is-enabled

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This “Num Lock randomly turning itself off” thing annoyed me for a couple of months after purchasing an Acer Swift laptop with Windows 11 and after trying all the standard solutions such as disabling fast startup, changing registry keys and forcing Num Lock status with powershell commands, I believe I have finally found the definitive solution.

Simply uninstall the “Quick Access” and “Quick Access Service” apps from Windows add/remove programs menu. This worked like a charm for me, no issues for a couple of days already.

If you have a different Acer model or laptop vendor, try to uninstall vendor-specific crapware that may have come with bundled OEM software.

Hope it helps, good luck.

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Yay, this totally worked.  I also tried all the other recommendations on the web with no success, including editing the registry etc. The only minor change I’ve noticed is that the onscreen num lock icon no longer appears momentarily when you turn the num lock on or off (which I’m totally fine with).  Great work

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