The background to this is that I previously had Windows XP installed, and had a hard drive failure. I fitted a new hard drive, but do not have an XP installation disk, so I installed Windows 98 instead.........

:confused: The problem I have is that whilst my keyboard functioned perfectly when I had XP installed, certain keys produce the wrong characters now that Win 98 is installed. The alphanumeric keys all work fine, but some of the others don't. For example, the " symbol is produced by the @ key and vice versa. The 3 ( shift ) key should produce a UKpounds sign, but produces #, and the # key produces \. The UKpound symbol seems to have gone AWOL. etc etc.

I have reset the BIOS to failsafe default values but it made no difference.

The problem is not with the keyboard, as I have tried 2 others and have the same result. I think the problem is with the Windows98 CD, as I also installed it on another PC and had the same keyboard anomalies.

I could test the theory by buying another Win98 CD but don't want to have to reformat and reinstall if I can avoid it.

How can I get my keyboard to produce the correct characters ?

The 3 ( shift ) key should produce a UKpounds sign, but produces #
Sounds to me like Windows thinks you're using a English (US) keyboard, and the fact that you're expecting it to produce the UK pound sign, plus your use of the word "whilst," leads me to believe across the pond! :)

Go into the Control Panel and find Keyboard. It should be self-explanatory from there.

:D thanks pentachris !

just did what you suggested, and now have a perfectly functioning keyboard

much appreciated

pentachris
Can you tell me how to make my keyboard spell correctly? I have had a look as per your instructions above but it does not allow me to set it for correct spelling. :rolleyes:

ErnieK:

As soon as I can figure out how to get my keyboard to quit dropping words, I'll work on getting yours to spell correctly. :o

...leads me to believe across the pond!

Oh well I will have to persivere with this stupid keyboard and hope that it will learn through my continued correction of its mistakes. ;)

I had a colleage who managed to drop a bit of toffee between keys and every time he hit the B key the glued N key fired after. Which was awkward as his name used one of them and he couldn't login (and who counts the asterisks?). He had to use a different identity/password and it took days until he finally determined to figure-out why his keyboard couldn't spell in Word where he could at least see the results clearly. Isn't techknowledgey wonderful?