My keyboard no longer types the letters shown on the keyboard and other letters appear in response to keystrokes. This suddenly happened when typing an email so I am unsure how this was caused. The computer is running Windows XP.

This keyboard problem is likely related to the keyboard layout which has been configured on the computer. The keyboard layout maps particular keys to characters (e.g. letters, numbers, special characters, etc.). The characters themselves are not stored on the keyboard – whenever you type a key on the keyboard a special code is transmitted from the keyboard to the computer which identifies which key was pressed. Be aware, this is not the character which was pressed (e.g. A, B, c, d) but instead a code which identifies the actual key button on the keyboard. It is then the responsibility of the computer operating system (in this case, Windows XP) to interpret and map that code to a particular character which is then used by software on the computer, such as an email client which displays that character on the screen when you are typing an email message.

It may seem a bit strange that the keyboard does not just send the actual character to the computer, since the characters are labelled on the keyboard keys, but this setup is actually quite smart as it allows different keyboard layouts to be used with any keyboard, regardless of what is written on the keys themselves. For example, some people use the Dvorak keyboard layout which proponents say is more efficient than the traditional QWERTY layout. If you take a look at the Wikipedia page for the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard) you will see a graphic depicting the layout of the keyboard. As you can see, this layout is quite different to QWERTY as the keys are all in different positions. However, even if you have a QWERTY keyboard you can still use the Dvorak layout by simply changing the keyboard layout configured in Windows (since the codes which the keyboard keys transmit when pressed are translated by Windows into their appropriate characters using the configured keyboard layout, which would be Dvorak). Of course, this also has wider implications for other countries which require different keys to a standard US keyboard, such as Europe who use the Euro symbol for currency rather than the dollar symbol.

While this has been an interesting discussion, we should now move onto actually fixing the problem which you are experiencing. I am unsure why this would have just randomly occurred when typing an email, but it should be relatively straight-forward to fix by changing the keyboard layout to US (which is the keyboard layout that we use in Australia). Go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open the “Regional and Language Options” control panel (you may need to first open the Date, Time, Language and Regional Options category if the control panel is being displayed in category view). In the Regional and Language Options window, click the “Languages” tab and underneath the “Text services and input languages” heading, click the “Details” button. This will open a further window showing the input languages. Ensure that the “Default input language” has been set to “English (Australia) – US”. Should this not be listed as an option you may need to add this input language by clicking the “Add” button underneath “Installed services” and then install the “English (Australia)” input language with the “US” keyboard layout. However, since the problem only recently occurred I imagine that you do have this input language installed, but it may have just become unset as the default. You should also take note if there is more than one input language installed (such as English Australia and French), as this may be useful information later. Once you have completed the procedures click OK to save and close the windows.

Should the problem continue then it is likely that more than one input language is installed on the computer, and you probably have the incorrect language currently enabled. This can easily be changed through using the Language Bar. In the bottom right-hand corner of the task bar (next to the clock) you should see a little blue square with white lettering (such as EN). This indicates the currently selected input language. If you don’t see this box, right-click in any empty space on the task bar then go to “Toolbars” > “Language bar” to enable the bar. Once the bar has been enabled, click the blue box and a small menu will appear allowing you to select the input language. Select “English (Australia)” from the available options. The keyboard should now function properly with the correct keys.