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Windows 8 key combinations inside of Hyper-V

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Along with the new user experience in Windows 8, we have introduced a number of new Windows-Key shortcut combinations.  For example – Windows Key + C will bring up the charms bar, while Windows Key + Z brings up the application bar.  You can read about all of the various options on the Getting around in Windows 8 post on the Windows team blog.

But how does this work for Windows 8 inside a Hyper-V virtual machine?

With Hyper-V on Windows 8 – we have updated things so that, by default, all Windows key combinations go through to the virtual machine (except for Windows Key + L for locking the desktop).  This means that you can just use the keyboard shortcuts out-of-the-box.

If, however, you are running Windows 8 on Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 – Windows key combinations will not go into the virtual machine by default.  But this can be easily remedied. All you need to do is to open the Hyper-V settings and go to the Keyboard setting:

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There you can select Use on the virtual machine.  Then you will be able to use the new key combinations in virtual machines too.

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2012
    OMG why does it have so many options? It should be simplified. And re-imagined as well. :)

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2012
    Hey Ben, We're using the AxMsRdpClient control embedded in a web browser for our connection.  Do you know if there is a means to send Windows Key Shortcuts when using this connection method? Alt-Home will send the windows key, but we cannot aggregate the windows key with other keystrokes. Any thoughts on approaches we should take to solve this issue? Thanks, -Mezz