Octane I am not sure of the exact difference apart from the £ $ sign difference?
ShyTorque The language was not set on U.S. English it was still set on N.Z. English but the keyboard didn't work as I wanted.
After doing the change as suggested ( see post 2 above ) the keyboard was working as it had been a couple of hours before it
went wrong. I suspect it was something to do with a Windows update that self downloaded.
As Exspeedbird and a few others say "Why can't MS leave it alone" when it works.