Windows 10: Caps Lock Not Toggling Off — Requires Shift Key to Type in Lowercase System-Level Bug

I'm facing a persistent issue with the Caps Lock key on Windows. When I press Caps Lock, it correctly switches to uppercase, but pressing it again does not revert to lowercase—I have to hold the Shift key to type in lowercase again. This behavior affects both my built-in laptop keyboard and an external USB keyboard, confirming it's not a hardware issue. I've already tried disabling Sticky Keys, Toggle Keys, and Filter Keys, confirmed the keyboard layout is set to US QWERTY, and ran the keyboard troubleshooter, but the issue still persists. This bug is severely affecting my daily professional w

:)

 

Press Shift Key to turn off Caps Lock

Actually, I get asked this quite a lot

There is, however, a very good reason to prefer this (old) „Typewriter Caps lock“-behavior over the new default, and it's simply this: if „Press the SHIFT key“ (instead of „Press the CAPS LOCK key“) is selected, then the behavior of „Caps lock“ changes from being a „toggle key“ to being a key that can only be used to turn „Caps lock“ on – to turn „Caps lock“ off, one has to press (either) one of the Shift keys.

This can be advantageous for touch typists, who are used to writing long passages of text without looking at the keyboard, and especially so if they're (C/C++) programmers, who may still regularly find themselves typing in variable names of CONSTANTS_IN_UPPERCASE.

That's because, if Caps lock is not a toggle key, it's not necessary to keep track of its current „toggle state“ in your head:

• If I want „Caps lock“ to be on, I can press CAPS as often as I like. If it happened to be enabled already, nothing changes; otherwise, I can be sure it's enabled afterwards.
  
  
• If I want „Caps lock“ to be off, I can simply press SHIFT

This sounds like a hypothetical advantage, but it's not. I work as a programmer, and I often find myself typing in code like the following:

/* Some debugging code; will only be included in debug builds: */
#if defined _DEBUG

Afterwards, I may pause a little, to think about the code line I would like to type in next. Now, if „Caps lock“ is a toggle key, I may (once I decide to continue) be unsure if I actually remembered to turn „Caps lock“ off at the end of ‘_DEBUG’.

Did I? Did I not? – The only way to be sure, is to look.

This is not so, if the „Press the SHIFT key“ behavior is enabled. If unsure, I can just press SHIFT once, be sure of the set state, and merrily continue may way.

That, for me, is the single most important reason to prefer the „Press the SHIFT key“ setting. Also, interestingly, this used to be the default behavior in the old days … at least, until Microsoft decided to ditch Windows 9x in favor of Windows NT¹.

¹ Actually, my memory could be wrong in this regard and I'm not completely sure … maybe someone more knowledgeable in those matters can confirm that the „Caps lock“ default behavior was indeed changed during the switch from Windows 9x to Windows XP?

 

How to type lowercase letters in PowerShell

When typing with Caps Lock off, I get lowercase letters without Shift, and uppercase letters with Shift.

When typing with Caps Lock ON, I get uppercase letters without Shift, but PowerShell ignores any letters typed with the Shift key. Any letters typed with Shift do not appear in the PowerShell window, and then in response to the Enter key, PowerShell behaves as if the letters were not typed at all.

Example: At a PowerShell prompt:

Set Caps Lock on, then type C, Shift+M, D. I expect to see

but I actually see

and pressing Enter acts as if I typed the command CD and not CMD.

All other apps behave the correct way (if Caps Lock is ON, typing letters while holding down Shift gives lowercase letters).

Is this a PowerShell bug?

 

pressing shift turns on caps lock

typing in all lowercase because this is incredibly frustrating. whenever i press shift, the caps lock is turned on. i have windows 10, and this started happening after installing the most recent update this morning - today is 12/6/2015. yes, sticky
keys and filter keys are disabled. when shift is pressed, the light actually comes on for the caps lock button, so i think somehow the shift function was replaced by the caps lock function. i have tried using the regedit fix to disable the caps lock button.
this caused the caps lock button to no longer work, which was expected, although the shift key still turns caps lock on.