Lost TAB- and ESC-keys in Virtual PC

I work a lot in Virtual PC environments and one problem I have stumbled across now and then is that keys sometimes stops working. Today it happened again so I “googled” it up and found a solution to my “lost keys”-problem.

I’m currently working in a VPC running Windows 2008 Server on my laptop that runs Windows 7 (64 bit).
The problem I’ve experienced is that the ESC- and TAB-keys occasionally stops working along with the ‘ö’-key on my keyboard (Swedish).

The solution to my problem was to make changes to the Local Security Policy that is located under the Administrative Tools in Control Panel.

I solved my problem by doing the following changes:

1. Close all VPC:s including the Virtual PC Console.
2. Open the “Local Security Policy”.
3. Select “Software Restriction Policies”.
4. Select “Additional Rules”.
5. Add a new “path rule” and enter the following path:

   %appdata%\microsoft\virtual pc\vpckeyboard.dll

   Note: The path to the vpckeyboard.dll-file may differ depending on what OS
   you are running. The text %appdata% is an environment variable in the system
   and can be replaced with the full path if you like.

6. Set the “Security Level” to “Unrestricted”.
7. Save the new rule by clicking the OK-button
8. Start your Virtual PC and now the key should work just fine.

The image below shows the Local Security Policy with the “Software Restriction Policies”-node selected.