some letters typed do not match keyboard

Question

some letters typed do not match keyboard

Help! I just came home from the apple store, where i bought a new battery for my G3 ibook. i started typing, and some of the letters come out wrong -- like when i tried to type a colon, I got a plus sign, or when i tried to use an apostrophe, I got a colon, and when i tried to use the real plus sign, i get this ~! SO what:s going on? I am about to travel and I need my ibook to work!

thanks for the help.

Posted on Sep 16, 2005 8:44 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 16, 2005 8:53 PM in response to Robin Zorn Demaio

Hi, Robin. Welcome to Apple Discussions.

It sounds like your keyboard preferences have been inadvertently reset to something besides the one you need.

Go to System Preferences > International > Input Menu and select the keyboard preferences you need (U.S., I assume).

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Answer 2

Sep 16, 2005 9:00 PM in response to Ronda Wilson

I just did what you suggested, Ronda, and US was already checked, as was something called character pallette. I unchecked that one, but I:m still not able to type those keys correctly (as you can tell from this note0. what is character palatte anyhow? and do you have any other suggestions?

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Answer 3

Sep 16, 2005 9:06 PM in response to Robin Zorn Demaio

Were any other keyboard layouts checked? Does the U.S. flag symbol appear in your menu bar (up near the battery status indicator)?

Here is the link to the explanation of the Character Palette:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=151626

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Answer 4

Sep 16, 2005 9:22 PM in response to Ronda Wilson

the US flag is there. But nothing else is checked in the input menu. I don:t understand the character palette thing. I read it, but i don:t think it applies to me. I just want my usual keyboard back!

How could this have happened simply by changing my battery?

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,200 points

Sep 17, 2005 5:46 AM in response to Robin Zorn Demaio

It sounds like your keyboard may have switched to the Japanese JIS type. Here is a picture:

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Keyboard-layout#Japanese

If so, a possible solution may be to reset the pmu:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

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Answer 6

Sep 17, 2005 3:10 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom, it's true that some of the keys were typing some of the Japanese keyboard you sent to me, but just a few. It was so weird! i called the apple store and talked to the guy who had helped me and he said he'd never heard of this happening before. He agreed with you that i should reset my pmu. well, in reading the article i decided to try restarting one more time (of course i had done that last night, and nothing changed) --well as you can see from my typing now all is resolved -- via a simple restart! i guess i'll have to chalk this up to one of life's oddities, but I appreciate your suggestion anyhow! thanks so much for taking the time to help me.

--Robin

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Answer 7

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,200 points

Sep 19, 2005 7:20 AM in response to Robin Zorn Demaio

Robin -- Glad to hear that a simple restart fixed the problem! Having your keyboard switch to JIS is pretty uncommon, but I have run into a half-dozen cases or so. Normally when this happens the keys change as follows:

@ > "
& > '
asterisk > (

( > )
- > =
= > ^
+ > ~
: > +
' > :
" > *

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Answer 8

StanB

Level 1

95 points

Nov 23, 2005 3:49 PM in response to Robin Zorn Demaio

I've looked through these posts and they come the closest to matching the problem I have. I have an iMac G5 with the bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. Most of the time the keyboard works fine, but once in a while I have to re-key a character because I will get a foreign symbol or a non-alpha character. I thought perhaps it had something to do with bluetooth, but I don't know. Has anyone else experienced this?

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Answer 9

Nov 24, 2005 8:07 AM in response to StanB

Hi, Stan.

This is the iBook G3 Dual USB forum. Few folks here are equipped with Bluetooth. You may want to post in the Bluetooth Discussions and/or the iMac G5 Discussions.

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