IME: Can't set Half-Width Alphanumeric as default in Windows 8 Japanese

Every time Windows 8 boots, the input is set to Hiragana as default.

I've used the Japanese versions of Windows 98, XP and 7 and the default input has always been Half-Width Alphanumeric.

Now, God knows why, it seems to be locked in Hiragana and I need Half-Width Alphanumeric to be the default setting since it's what I use the most.

I've read some sites suggesting to go to the registry and change a value.

The value is located in: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\IME\15.0\IMEJP\MSIME

And the value is: option3 (REG_DWORD)

According to these sites, changing the value from 0 to D, forces the input to Half-Width Alphanumeric.

Well, I did this and Hiragana is still the default.

If instead of changing 0 to D I use other values such as 3, 5 and B, I can set as default the other inputs (Full-Width Alphanumeric, Full-Width Katakana, etc) but Half-Width Alphanumeric won't work.

I don't want to believe that Microsoft did this intentionally to annoy paying customers so, for now, I'll believe they missed a bug in this release of Windows and it can be solved.

Does anyone know a way to solve this?

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