What good is the Scroll Lock key?

Question

I haven't seen any use for it lately? Anyone have any examples?

Answer 1

It's more of a vestige from the IBM PC Keyboard. Wikipedia has a nice history on it.

Answer 2

Very useful in applications like Excel sometimes, when you want to keep the cursor in a big table in its place while looking around for something.

Has other uses, but since I'm doing in excel at the present this first sprang to mind.

Answer 3

The Straight Dope has a good summary:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2125/whats-the-scroll-lock-key-on-my-computer-for

The Scroll Lock key has appeared on the keyboards of IBM personal computers since the original 83-key PC/XT and the 84-key AT layouts, and remains on the 101-key and greater "enhanced" keyboards currently in use. The Scroll Lock key wasn't on the original Macintosh keyboards but appears on the Mac's "enhanced" keyboard.

The main intent of the Scroll Lock key was to allow scrolling of screen text up, down and presumably sideways using the arrow keys in the days before large displays and graphical scroll bars. You can see where this might have been handy in the DOS era, when screen output typically was limited to 80 characters wide by 25 rows deep. For some types of programs, spreadsheets being the obvious example, it's still handy now. In Microsoft Excel, Scroll Lock allows you to scroll a spreadsheet with the arrow keys without moving the active cell pointer from the currently highlighted cell. In Quattro Pro, another spreadsheet program, Scroll Lock works in a similar manner, although in contrast to Excel it's not possible to scroll the active cell pointer completely off the screen.

Answer 4

I have a bunch of KVMs that use Scroll-Lock, Scroll-Lock as an "attention" sequence.

Answer 5

It's nice to have a few spare keys around for custom actions :)

I use scroll lock all the time to switch keyboard layouts (thanks IBM!).

Answer 6

In the FreeBSD console, it stops the screen from scrolling, and allows you to page back through the buffer.

Answer 7

The major usage nowadays is Excel and other spreadsheet editors. But it has another application: to force a crash to generate a kernel-mode dump file for debugging purpose, and break into the kernel debugger if one has been attached, by holding down Right Ctrl and press Scroll Lock twice.

Configure the following settings to enable a system crash using the keyboard:

1. If you want a crash dump file to be written, you must enable such dump files. Choose the path and file name, and select the size of the dump file. For more information, see Enabling a kernel-mode dump file.

2. With PS/2 keyboards, you must enable the keyboard-initiated crash in the registry. In the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters, create a value named CrashOnCtrlScroll, and set it equal to a REG_DWORD value of 0x01.

3. With USB keyboards, you must enable the keyboard-initiated crash in the registry. In the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters, create a value named CrashOnCtrlScroll, and set it equal to a REG_DWORD value of 0x01.

4. With Hyper-V keyboards, you must enable the keyboard-initiated crash in the registry. In the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\hyperkbd\Parameters, create a value named CrashOnCtrlScroll, and set it equal to a REG_DWORD value of 0x01.

Forcing a system crash from the keyboard

See also

• Why does Windows still have the BSOD on Ctrl+Scroll+Scroll "feature"?
• Generating a complete memory dump in Windows

Answer 8

Ctrl+Scroll Lock removes annoying message "No files were found to look in. Find was stopped in progress." in Visual Studio. So 'Scroll Lock' is the best key on my keyboard.

Answer 9

I use scroll lock when searching through large spreadsheets, I can move around in the spreadsheet without losing my place.

Answer 10

Auto-run in World of Warcraft and many other MMOG's.