things to check if ... the characters on your keyboard are wrong on the screen
If you find that some of the characters you type with the keyboard actually come out differently on the screen this is probably because Windows is set to use the wrong keyboard.
This effect is most often experienced when you are using a UK keyboard but Windows thinks you have a US keyboard attached. US keyboards have a slightly different layout to UK ones and the most obvious difference is that the " and @ characters are swapped.
Typing @ on a UK keyboard will appear as " on the screen, and vice versa.
How to fix this Problem
Open Windows Control Panel by following these steps:
- Click on Start at the bottom left of your screen
- On the menu that appears, click on Control Panel
- This will open the Windows Control Panel which contains a collection of tools that allow you to manage your computer.
In the Control Panel you will see an icon titled Regional and Language Options.
Double click on this icon to open the tool to set these regional options.
You should notice that this new window has three tabs at the top: Regional Options, Languages and Advanced.
Regional Options Tab
- Check that both the drop-down list boxes have your correct country and language selected.
Languages Tab
With the Languages tab selected click on the Details button.
The new window that appears specifies the default input language options.
With the Languages tab selected (at the top of the window) check to see whether the drop-down list box is displaying your correct country.
If not check to see whether your country appears in the list when you click on the down-arrow at the right of this list box. If your country does appear in the list you should select it.
If your country does not appear in the list you need to click on the Add button.
In this new window select your country and then click on OK (you can leave all the other boxes blank).
You will now see that your country appears in the drop-down list in the regional settings window and you should select it in the list.
Now click OK on the two windows still open and close the Control Panel. Test your keyboard and you should now find that the correct keys produce the correct results on the screen.