Thank you all for your suggestions, MM got me heading the right way
I looked in Control Panel -> regional settings / language etc selected -> Languages -> text services and input languages-> details and there under installed services was the option to change the keyboard language. I added English US and removed English UK and bingo all is well.
What is weird is when it was supplied by my employer it was set to US. By some weird combination of key presses probably as a result of trying to do something too quickly I managed to find the exact combination that changed it to a UK setting Doh!!!
