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Remembering Calculator and Character Map Settings

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Here’s an odd little one you might not have noticed.  The Windows Calculator applet remembers whether it was last displayed in “Standard” or “Scientific” view, and whether digit grouping was selected, and restores those settings the next time you use it.  Because this applet dates back to the very early days of Windows, it saves these settings in the win.ini file in the Windows folder.  There are two problems with this:  1) the settings apply to all users of the computer, and 2) you need to be an administrator to write your settings into this file.  Likewise, the Character Map applet remembers the last font and codepage selected, and whether “Advanced view” was checked – but only if the user is an admin.

 

The odd thing is that Windows NT and its successors have always had a mechanism to redirect .ini file access to the registry.  For some reason, this was never applied to calc.exe or charmap.exe.  But you can fix this.

 

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

 

· Run regedit.exe as an administrator

· Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\win.ini

· To “fix” Calculator, create a new String value called SciCalc.  Set the data for this string value to
USR:Software\Microsoft\SciCalc

· To “fix” Character Map, create a new String value called MSUCE.  Set the data for this string value to:
USR:Software\Microsoft\CharMap

· Reboot the computer.  (Rebooting is required only if you have used Calculator or CharMap since the previous reboot.)

 

This will cause the applications’ settings to be written to the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SciCalc and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CharMap, respectively.  The application settings are now per-user, and admin is no longer required to save settings!

 

Thanks to Michael Entin for the CharMap fix.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2005
    Hmm...
    There is already an (apparently unused) entry for "MS CharMap" in Windows 2000 and XP. Will this be removed?
    Other "applets" installed with Windows have their entries below HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionApplets. Shouldn't this be the place for SciCalc and CharMap`too?

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2005
    No idea about whether the apparently unused entry will be removed. As far as whether HKCU...Applets would be the proper place for SciCalc and CharMap - my guess is simply that these applets go back to Windows 3.0 and probably earlier, when win.ini was where the settings were stored. It was probably considered not worth the risk/effort to touch that portion of the code for those and many other apps/applets, particularly when the IniFileMapping mechanism was available.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2005
    If you have not read Jen's article on LUA, you should be asking yourself why not?

    This article...

  • Anonymous
    April 18, 2005
    Complete list of Aaron Margosis' non-admin / least privilege posts, for easy lookup.

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2005
    Get your friends and family, all those folks that come to you for computer help once their machines have...

  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2005
    Thanks for tip dude...
    very helpful

    Wish I had admin privileges on my comp :(

  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    Does anybody know where i can download the microsoft character map and calculator from? mine are missing.

  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    Mitchell: they aren't downloadable - they are part of the OS. I don't think you can even not install them or uninstall them using the Add/Remove Programs UI (you can probably choose not to install them if you use a customized unattended installation script). Are the Start menu shortcuts missing, or the actual executables? You should find both charmap.exe and calc.exe in %windir%system32. Character Map is in the Accessories System Tools submenu of the Start menu; Calculator should be in Accessories.

    HTH

  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    A systematic approach for working around LUA bugs that avoids unnecessary exposure

  • Anonymous
    March 13, 2006
    Uhhh yea mine are missing too. I think it might of happened when I uninstalled the IE 7 program. I found the new calculator software luckily but not the char map.

  • Anonymous
    April 30, 2006
    Aaron, you can remove the calculator and other 'built-in' apps from the add/remove programs ui quite easily.

    Have a look at http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1261/ for more info.

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2007
    Any chance MS could create a Help & Support article for this article as it always takes me half an hour to find it every time I run in to the problem again.

  • Anonymous
    May 15, 2016
    The comment has been removed