every single letter is swapped on keyboard

[emorjon2]

hi. i do really need your help. i have tried to find help on google but i do not get any help at all from there.
all characters are swapped on the keyboard. when i type a m,for example, it produces an c. thanks to my programming skills i am capable of typing correct letters by typing into an consol which encodes it and return the correct word or meaning which i copy and paste where i wanna type it. that's why i type with just small letters.
but it is still timewaste to type into a consol and then copy the text it produces so i want the problem to dissappear.
the problem has not always been. usually it holds on for a couple of hours or even days before everything is normal again suddenly without me doing anything
down below is a list of how the keys are mapped right now:

"x": "q",
"b": "w",
"q": "e",
"o": "r",
"j": "t",
"d": "y",
"r": "u",
"a": "i",
"p": "o",
"e": "p",
"w": "a",
"k": "s",
"s": "d",
"l": "f",
"h": "g",
"y": "h",
"t": "j",
"f": "k",
"z": "l",
"g": "z",
"i": "x",
"u": "c",
"n": "v",
"m": "b",
"v": "n",
"c": "m",
" ":" ",
"0":"0",
"4":"1",
"5":"2",
"8":"3",
"9":"4",
"6":"5",
"7":"6",
"3":"7",
"1":"8",
"2":"9",
".":"."

this list is copied from my code which converts it into the right characters. each row shows the key on the right side, and the characters it produces instead, on the left side.
the keys which are swapped are the letters, the numbers and some other keys.

i wish someone could help me. even if this problem might dissapear one day magicly, i still want to know how to remove the problem if it appear again.

[JorgeM]

This sounds bizarre. Have you tried a different keyboard to determine if the problem is your keyboard or if its someone messing with you because they installed a hidden program running in the background?

[rubberman]

Ah! You must have ordered the keyboard for dyslexics... :rolleyes: Sorry, couldn't help myself!

Seriously though, you need to go into the Control Panel / Ease of Access Center and turn on the on-screen keyboard. See if that is also reversed. In Linux you can remap the keyboard pretty easily, but I don't know off-hand how to with the current crop of Windows machines. I remember I could do that back in the Windows 3.1x and Windows 2000 days.

[caperjack]

because it come and goes ,i would buy a new keyboard ,assuming it not a laptop ,as they are a little more expensive ,just to try to see if it make a difference

[Dani]

Are you sure that you aren't accidentally hitting some type of hotkey that is swapping between qwerty and dvorak layouts?

[emorjon2]

thank you all for your replies. I should have answered them much earlier but the email notification wasn't set yet.

I forgot to tell in the thread that I have tested the on-screen keyboard too, but even there the keys are swapped the same way as on the keyboard. therefore it can't be keyboard. it must be the windows operating system which has the error because I have installed ubuntu, so I can swap operative system whenever I want, and the thing is that on ubuntu the keyboard error never appears.

as answer to danis question, I can say that you came with a clever answer but the layout is different each time it happens. one time, the q can give a x, like in the mapping code, but the next time the problem happens the q can giva an f or a completely other character than what it was last time it happend. dvorak is a type of layout, an alternative to qwerty-layout, and if there was a hotkey making the keyboard switch between those layouts, the "epic" layout would have been the same each time.

so, now you got enough information to help me. will be thankful for answers.

[gerbil]

Check this value in your registry. At key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\CodePage, check that...
OEMCP=437.
And that it does not change between startups.
It is possible for applications to change the codepage via several functions. If it is fixed at the same value each time then somehow your codepage is getting altered internally.
And that is all I know about keyboards and the characters that they produce.

[Rik_]

Is it a laptop or a PC? The reason I ask is because I have a Dell 1050 laptop at work that does a very similar thing except for the fact it will often suddenly power off. It even messes up the on screen keyboard too. With it's internal keyboard physically removed and a USB keyboard plugged in it behaves correctly.
I have determined that the keyboard or the keyboard controller is the cause. I will know more later today.

[Julia Anderson]

i think you should change your keyboard. it might help you.

[rubberman]

Ok. Your last comment about the fact that the "mapping" can change between boots, and that the on-screen keyboard also is fubar, is telling. To me that means it is most likely that the system keyboard controller is bad. I think it needs to be sent in for repair. Both the physical and on-screen keyboards send scan codes to the controller, which in turn talks to the operating system. One final test to determine this is to boot a Linux live cd/dvd disc and see if it is also mucked up. If so, it is a hardware problem with (most likely) the keyboard controller. If not, then... I am clueless! :-)

[gerbil]

It happens with OSK, it happens with your kbd, but never with Ubuntu. Only Windows. Any hardware kbd controller is built into the kbd, or in the case of a laptop at the end of a ribbon cable. But that hardware controller has nothing to do with OSK. What inputs it takes from the OS I have no clue about.
So, to basics. Test it in Safe Mode. There you have no third-party filter drivers, just kbdclass and kbdhid, both M$ drivers. If it does not happen there, then likely you have some malware. Scanned?

[emorjon2]

I have solved it. the problem behind it is something noone could expect and it took alot of time for me before I finally solved it too.
I had a chinese chat software called QQ. I restarted the computer several times and discovered that the problem with the keyboard appeared the exactly same time as QQ started. I killed the QQ process and than the problem dissappeared. probably a bug has been created in the QQ software somehow, or it has been attacked by a virus. anyway, I now know that I can solve the problem by simply kill the process of that chat software.

still, there are many questions left, but who cares? I solved the problem ^^

[gerbil]

"It is possible for applications to change the codepage via several functions."
"Test it in Safe Mode."

Cchecking, QQ is now Unicode, so... I don't know. Reinstall it, i guess.