Virtual PC: Tab/Escape not working

Posted September 16th, 2009 by Eric Webb

Today, all of the sudden the tab and escape keys stopped working in Virtual PC.  Had never happened before.  I reinstalled VM Additions, restarted the VM, nothing worked.  I then found the solution in a form post:

“If you are running into this issue on Vista and Windows 7 you can get the TAB key back by creating a software allow policy. Go to administrative tools, local security policy, Software Restriction Policies, Additional Rules. Create a new rule for %appdata%\microsoft\vritual pc\vpckeyboard.dll and set it to Unrestricted. Restart Virtual PC.   If the variable doesn’t work, try using an explicit path i.e. c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\microsoft\virtualpc\vpckeyboard.dll”

Did that and it started working.  Note in the post that this applies to Vista and Windows 7 only.  I’m running Windows 7 x64.