# Solved: strange keyboard problem, need to press a key twice



## dhnp (Feb 21, 2008)

I finally have run out of patience and need to ask for help.
My microsoft keyboard works perfectly with my laptop, yet when I plug it in to my desktop computer.

The key with the* " *and* ' *symbols on them (the key immediately to the left of the enter key and 2 to the right of the L key) needs to be pressed twice for either of the symbols to appear. And when this keyboard key is pressed the 2nd time, I get the symbols twice, that is "" or '' instead of " or '

Can someone please suggest a solution?

The desktop computer is a "Medion"computer, I have checked that the keyboard is set up for English (United States) and to the best of my ability, all the settings on my computers for keyboards are the same, yet this problem only occurs on the desk top computer (the desk top is running windows 7, where as my laptop is XP)

Would appreciate some assistance, this is a small frustration, but an annoying one, having to press the key twice, then delete one of the symbols in order to get the desired " or '.

thanks in advance
Dave


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## vicks (Jan 31, 2005)

You might try going to the computer manufacturer's site and see if they have any drivers for the WIN 7 .... if so I would update to those. 
vicks


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## dhnp (Feb 21, 2008)

thank you I have emailed them asking?
will update thread irrespective of result, once I get an answere.


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## dhnp (Feb 21, 2008)

Problem Solved: I received the following advice from the manufacturer and after a little trial and error, got the keys working as I expected, thanks for your help.
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Because the keyboard works on the XP machine it indicates that it is a software setting in Windows 7 that is causing the problem.

When a key is pressed on the keyboard, Windows looks up a table to see what character was intended when you pressed that key, regardless of what is printed on the physical key. This allows the same keyboard to be used to type in many languages. E.g. you can type in Korean using a US keyboard. Windows just looks up a table to match that physical key location with the character that is in that spot on an actual Korean keyboard and displays that character.

Similarly, in other languages there are keyboard combos that you press for certain characters. E.g. you can type an accented character found in many European languages using a US keyboard with a 2-key sequence. The behaviour you are seeing seems to be related to this. Even though you have a US keyboard layout it seems to be expecting some other input.

The following keys may behave similarly but are unlikely to have been noticed as they are rarely used.

[ ` ] and [ ~ ] (both beneath Escape)
[ ^ ] (Shift+6).

If these have the same behaviour then the problem is likely that Windows is set to expect the possibility of accented letters being input such as é, à, ö, î, ñ. Basically, when one of those keys is pressed, Windows awaits the next keystroke to see if you wanted to construct an accented letter. Even if the other keys don't operate the same there are a wide variety of behaviours for different keyboards. E.g. Spanish keyboard settings work similarly to what you are experiencing but it is not the only possibility.

In the Windows 7 language settings you can specify both the language and keyboard. The selected settings are on the Text Services and Input Languages window. At the top of that Window there is a drop down list under the section Default input language. In the drop down list it will have something like "English (Australia) - US". English (Australia) is the language, US is the keyboard layout. What does your say? If it is something like "English (United States) - Spanish" then this would be the source of the problem. Basically, no matter what language is selected it should end in "- US" so that the keys behave correctly (unless of course you need it to input differently).

To get to this screen follow these steps:

1. Click the round Start button at the bottom left of the screen to bring up the Start Menu.
2. There is a search box at the bottom left of the menu. You don't need to click in there, you can just type and the text will it appears there. Type "region" and the menu will update to match what you typed.
3. At the top of the menu under Control Panel click the link for Region and Language.
4. In the Region and Language window click the Keyboards and Languages tab then click Change keyboards. The Text Services and Input Languages window will appear.

Basically you should look at the language settings and ensure that the language is English and that the keyboard is just US.

On the Text Services and Input Languages window the large box at the bottom left lists all languages and keyboards that have been selected. You can move languages and keyboards up and down this list. You cannot remove things from the list that are selected as the default at the top of the screen. Change the setting at the top and then move the keyboard or language down the list before removing it. The buttons on the right of the large box control the order and addition or removal of items.

Windows can also have multiple language settings and a keyboard combination (usually Left Alt+Shift) switches between them at any time. Some software (e.g. Adobe Photoshop) have keyboard shortcuts for various functions where Alt and Shift are pressed together to get a variation of a command so this can inadvertantly lead to switching language settings. To prevent this you can remove any language settings that you don't need. If you need to have multiple languages and switch between them you can prevent inadvertant switching by changing the key combo that Windows uses to switch languages. Do this on the Advanced Keyboard Settings tab of the Text Services and Input Languages window.


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