Key symbols
 

Hi all

Performed a system recover on my desktop (xp). Now, I'm having problems with three keys.....Shift and @ displays " Shift and £ displays # and shift 2 displays@ all the other keys perform normally.Any ideas greatly appreciated.

Daz

Change the keyboard settings back to UK (currently set to US.)

Yes at some point during the first boot, the Windows installation would have asked you about your language and locale. Unfortunately this process in XP is a horrible mess:

(1) It defaults to US for everthing, i.e. Locale is USA, language is US-English, keyboard is US-English and the time zone will be somewhere in the states too

(2) All of these settings have to be set individually, there may be circumstances where having them set mismatched makes sense, i.e. a Brit moving to the US and taking a laptop with them. But 9 times out of 10, they will need to match, so why it isn't enough to say "I'm in the UK" and everything gets set accordingly I don't know. Windows Vista and 7 do go some way towards that I believe.

(3) Setting the correct keyboard layout only takes proper effect after a restart. It is not possible to add the UK layout and remove the US one in one step. The installer tries, and then says it can't do it, and the change will take effect on the next restart.

It's irritating, but provided you don't skip through the initial settings scripts too quickly you will catch the needed changes.

Hi Mac

So does this mean I have to run the system recovery again?

Daz
ps. Thanks for your reply GG

No need to run recovery again just go to the control panel. Select the Date, Time Language and Regional Options. Then select Regional and language options. In the regional and languages tabs you can change the settings to United Kingdom English.

Hi Srobarts

Did as you suggested it is now 'English UK' no luck, got MS 'word' up to give it a try and the same problem. Anyway, thank you for your post.

Daz

Did you go to the Text Services and Input Languages? - press details and you should get to a screen that shows Default Input Language and the installed services will show the keyboard language. You may have to add English(united Kingdom) as keyboard language. You then will have two keyboard languages - change the default to English(United Kingdom). You can only remove the US keyboard option after a re-boot with UK as the default.

srobarts..........Sorted!!!!!!!! Thanks so much.

Daz

No probs, glad its sorted.

:ok: Yay! Glad its sorted.

Irritating isn't it?