Friday, July 10, 2009

Make the Windows XP Calculator always start in scientific mode


I got very tired of having to select "View..Scientific" every time I started the calculator (calc.exe).

It turns out that if you are a non-administrative user (you're not doing daily work as an admin, are you?), then it doesn't save the last-used state.

To make the calculator start in scientific mode every time, edit C:\WINDOWS\win.ini, and add this:
[SciCalc]
layout=0


If you're using Vista, you can set it in the registry

5 comments:

  1. if you are not admin user how can you edit files in WINDOWS directory???? useless post...

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  2. great post!
    @aweaka: careful reading helps avoiding shameful comments:
    quote: "(you're not doing daily work as an admin, are you?)" does NOT mean you don't have admin rights at all.

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  3. The question is still valid, what if one has no admin rights at all on the machine?

    Is there another way? Like using command line parameters for instance...

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  4. Me again, who just asked the question today, found a solution for non-admins:

    The key is: "INI file redirection", just save the following lines to a .reg file and run it, for me it worked even with the tough security policy rules applied by the IT department :)

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\win.ini]
    "SciCalc"="USR:Software\\Microsoft\\SciCalc"

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  5. Thanks, Anonymous! Looks like you would need elevated privileges to setup the INI file mapping -- but then regular users of that machine would be able to start calc in the last-used state.

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