An unprotected keyboard can cause a number of problems. Keyboards are magnets for children – they are attracted to them. If you have a child in the house and are working on your computer, you will definitely face problems when the child will mess around with the keyboard. The same goes for any pets you have in your house. If you have any downloads underway, or have highlighted a file, a simple press of the keyboard keys can terminate the downloads or delete the files. In short, an unprotected keyboard can be quite problematic.
A great tool to solve the unprotected keyboard problem is Keyboard Locker.
The program is a small AutoHotKey script that was originally written by an AutoHotKey forum-goer named Lexikos. HowToGeek has spruced it up a bit and compiled it so that you we do not need to have AutoHotKey installed.
The application is a 200KB downloadable archive which is extracted to obtain the EXE file; opening the EXE file places a new keyboard icon in the System Tray (as shown in the image above). Locking the keyboard can be done by the CTRL+ALT+L key combination.
To unlock the keyboard we need to type UNLOCK.
To get the balloon notification as in the image above, we need to right-click on the System Tray icon and enable the “SHOW TRAY NOTIFICATIONS” option.
Adding a shortcut of Keyboard Locker in the Startup folder in the Start Menu will run the application at Windows startup.
Keyboard Locker does not interfere with any other processes and purely performs the function it is intended for. Give it a try and see if it secures how your keyboard is secured in your absence.
