Wrong special characters on keyboard

Question

Level 1

13 points

Wrong special characters on keyboard

Hello all,

I recently bought a late-2013 mac book pro and I am having a peculiar issue. When I hold shift and any of the numbers on the top row, the incorrect characters appear. Now, I know most of you my point me towards the keyboard input source, or the preferred language options, but I have tried that many times already. Additionally, I have tried a fresh install of OSX and still, the same things happen.

What makes this a little more troublesome, is that my keyboard works great in my Win7 virtual machine on Fusion 8 on the same MBP. Weird right? Although that being the case does lead me to believe it is a software issue of some sort.

Any assistance that anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

-Tom

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Aug 12, 2016 12:56 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,542 points

Aug 13, 2016 7:56 AM in response to TomTheWicked

TomTheWicked wrote:

When I hold shift and any of the numbers on the top row, the incorrect characters appear.

Exactly what is the sequence you get instead of the standard (for US) of ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) ?

Reply

Answer 2

TomTheWicked Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 15, 2016 7:53 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom, Sorry for the delayed response. I get ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 0 = ~ while holding shift and going 1-9 and the dash and equal keys.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

Reply

Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,542 points

Sep 15, 2016 8:42 AM in response to TomTheWicked

TomTheWicked wrote:

Hi Tom, Sorry for the delayed response. I get ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 0 = ~ while holding shift and going 1-9 and the dash and equal keys.

It looks like your machine thinks you have a Japanese JIS keyboard, which is the wrong “keyboard type”. The correct type is ISO or ANSI (depending on whether you are in Europe or in the US).

See this note for some ideas on trying to fix it.

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2009/12/fixing-keyboard-type-problems.html

Reply

Answer 4

TomTheWicked Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 15, 2016 8:42 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks for the assist, Tom! I had to go through all the options, all the way down to installing the Karabiner app to get it to work properly, but THAT was definitely a life saver. Thanks for the help!

Reply