Hey, gang...

My friend has a Compaq Presario model 17XL260. The keyboard has seen
better days, with various missing keys and such. She ordered a new
keyboard from a vendor, installed it, and the characters typed don't
match the characters on the keys. (type 'a', get 'z', etc.). Thinking
the new keyboard was defective, she reinstalled her original keyboard
(and it still maps the characters correctly), returned the new one,
then bought another new one directly from HP. Same problem with the
2nd new keyboard, but her original keyboard (though it's missing
buttons) still functions correctly, mapping the proper characters for
the proper keys.

I'm stumped. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tim from Jersey

Can we assume that the new keyboards were purchased in the same country
as the laptop? In any case, after installing the new keyboard, go to
Control Panel>Keyboards. There is a tab where one specifies the type
(language) of the keyboard, so make sure it is correct. (Can't tell you
exactly the name of the tab says because I'm not on an English computer
at the moment).

Yep, the laptop and leyboards were all purchased in the US. I'll give
that a try, however. I'm wondering if there's a character mapping
issue, but I'd assume that wouldn't change, as isn't that determined by
the OS instead of the keyboard itself?

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try.

Any other ideas out there?

flemtone wrote:
Different countries use different keyboards. Although there are not so
many (but some) variations with respect to the alphabet and numerics,
the special characters often vary. Hence teh need to identify the
keyboard to the operating system. So that you have, for example, IT
(Italian), PT (Portuguese), etc.

In your case, if even the alphabet comes out incorrectly, then I would
be tempted to think that your keyboard is not a QWERTY, but that is not
likely if it is a US keyboard.