Help! I have windows XP home, and Office 2007 home – my keyboard stopped working all of a sudden in Word, ie, the letters typed were transposed with completely different ones – for instance, “help comes out as d.nl.” It, however, worked okay online for gmail etc (I use Firefox as my browser). Suddenly it has stopped working online and now works perfectly okay in Word. What the???? I’ve had to type this in word and cut and paste to post this. I have downloaded all the security packs etc, etc, for both Office and XP.
Now to search, I have to type in Word and then paste it into Google bar – CastleCops – then everything I want to say has to be typed and pasted – backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards….eeek! I’m tearing my hair out! Mouse works fine (thank God – I need it to toggle!)

Turned on computer this morning and it's all okay and back to normal keyboard-wise! A gremlin perhaps?!

Yikes! It keeps happening - I have to reboot to get it back to normal. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, as I'm doing a second job and start at 2:00am in the morning to get the typing done before heading off to work at 9:00am - it's hugely frustrating. The keyboard is fine - I've tested it on a friend's laptop with the same versions of XP and Office as me.

It sounds like something is changing the KB layout on your mahine, and furthermore, that something might have actually assigned a commonly used KB shortcut to do this - so that in stead of your KB shortcut doing what it is supposed to, it is in fact invoking a layout changer.

Do you ahve more than one KB layout set in your OS?

Thank you. Re OS, I have absolutely no idea - as far as I'm aware I only have one - have checked language setup in both XP and Office and it is set to English Aus. I have a suspicion it is something to do with using the control key with something, but am not game to experiment until the weekend when I can afford the downtime. As you say, a shortcut is probably the problem, but unfortunately I type so quickly and have so many automated shortcuts, I wouldn't have a clue what it is. Will post when I've done my "diagnostics." Thank you again, for your response.

Is this a laptop, and is there a function key nearby that control key?

No not a laptop and no function key - normal keyboard layout. Anyhow, I haven't been able to replicate the problem, which, of course, is typical when you need to for advice! Betcha I encounter it again in the early hours when deadline looms!

Hmmm - just a normal KB, no fancy buttons or anything like that - and the errors are application specific - meaning it happened in Word but not Fx, then it happened in Fx and not Word....

May sound off beat, but have you scanned for Malware recently?

Hi - yes first thing I do when things go wrong is run scans (I have ZoneAlarm Security Suite, but also use Trend Micro House Call "for a second opinion"). Anyhow, I think I've solved the problem. I use a digital transcription program Lanier Express Scribe (very limited online support when you google it). When every time I opened it and then Word my monitor changed to 8bit colours and I had to change it back to 32, I got suspicious. Uninstalling and reinstalling didn't help. This morning I had the very belated bright idea of changing the Express Scribe to compatibility with Windows 2000 and haven't had a problem since. Fingers crossed! Thank you for your response - I really appreciated it.

Glad you figured out the problem (so far). Hope this is a permanent solution and good luck.

Thank you - thought I'd add that as at now everything is ok. I had a problem with the foot pedal so was using the F keys to operate the player - F9 = play, F4 = stop, etc. Think there was a registry crossover or something. Thanks again for your help.