How to : Change your keyboard settings

An incorrectly chosen region selection can cause problems with certain characters being either unavailable or being incorrectly assigned to the wrong key.

Here’s a quick guide on how to change to the right setting for your region.

For the purposes of this exercise, I’m assuming your operating on a Windows XP based system and have sufficient Adminstrator status to make these types of change.

You should save any work and shut down any programs you are running because you will need to restart your computer should you need to make any changes.

Ready? Ok here we go.

First of all click the Windows “Start” button and then click on the “Control Panel” icon.

Whilst you might naturally think the “Keyboard” menu is the right selection, its actually the “Regional and Language Options” page we need.



So double click that and you will be presented with a pop-up menu box with some selection tabs and drop-down menu selections.



If you are in the United Kingdom using a standard region layout keyboard you should select English (United Kingdom) and then United Kingdom in the location menu.

Should you need to change any settings, click the “Apply” button.



Then click the “Advanced” menu tab. The language drop down menu should be set to English(United Kingdom).

If you have made any changes here, click the “Apply” button then “OK“.

You will then be prompted to restart your computer. Select restart and hopefully all should be well.

A quick test to see if your region has been correctly selected is to open Notepad and then press SHIFT 2 if you type a ” character, your keyboard is correctly configured.