I’ve noticed this issue for as long as I’ve been running Windows Vista… I’ll be happily typing along when all of a sudden my keyboard starts spewing out random characters instead of what I’m expecting. The most annoying switch is when I get an accented e (é, from French or Latin) instead of a question mark (?).

Well it finally annoyed me one time too many, so I figured out the solution. I’ve long known that it has something to do with the keyboard layout that you have selected. This selection is buried in the Control Panel under the “Regional and Language” settings. Of course it would be too much to ask for this to be included with the “Keyboard” settings… It will only occur if you have more than one installed keyboard layout AND if you have a shortcut enabled to switch the keyboard layout.

By default the keyboard shortcut to change the input language is enabled with the key combination “Left Alt + Shift”, and the keyboard shortcut to change the keyboard layout is enabled with the key combination “Ctrl + Shift”. That makes total sense because I’m sure nobody ever presses Alt and Shift or CTRL and Shift at the same time. (Editors Note – Sarcasm Applied)

Fortunately if you disable either one of these things then your random keyboard troubles will disappear. Let’s do both:

Remove Unused Keyboard Layouts

• Go to your Control Panel and open “Regional and Language Settings”
• Switch to the “Keyboards and Languages” tab and select “Change Keyboards”



• Before doing anything else, ensure that you have the desired keyboard selected. For most of my readers that is most likely to be “US“, but if you are in a different country or use a different primary language, your preference will be different.



• Select all other keyboards layouts other than the one you wish to use. The default installation of vista seems to include the “US” Keyboard as well as one or two other layouts specific to the country you told Vista that you live in when you first installed it. I’m Canadian so all of my computers have “Canadian French” and “Canadian Multilingual Standard” installed.
• Click “Remove” to delete these keyboard layouts.

Delete the Hotkey combination that changes Keyboard Layouts

• Click on the “Advanced Key Settings” tab
• Select the “Between input languages” setting in the Actions window, then hit the “Change Key Sequence…” button



• Choose “Not Assigned” for the “Switch Input Language” AND for the “Switch Keyboard Layout” settings, then click “OK”
• Click “OK” all the way out. You may need to reboot your machine to lock in this change

Well, that’s it. It may seem like a lot of steps (and it is for such a ridiculous setting), but it’s fast and easy to do and it will eliminate lots of headaches!

This is another one that I assume will be the same in Windows 7, but I haven’t been able to test it yet. I’ll get back to you sometime on or near October 22nd!!

UPDATE Oct 27, 2009 – This trick is definitely still applicable to Windows 7, and it works perfectly!

Coming up with a good domain name or URL for a new website can be exceedingly difficult these days.  There are so many webpages out there that it often seems like all the good names have already been taken.  Chances are that any combination of one, two, or even three words related to your intended website topic will already have been joined together to make up a website URL. 

When creating the URL (and therefore the brand itself) for this website I tested over two hundred potential URL’s before I found an address that I was happy with.  Don’t get me wrong, I found other available URL’s along the way, just not one that I really wanted to create  a brand around.  Here are a couple of tips that might help make your life easier when creating a new web address:

1. Try a random phrase generator to help with some words.  Ideally you could find one that would allow you to narrow down the range of words or concepts first before you start hitting the next button.  Unfortunately I can’t recommend anything like that because I simply couldn’t find one.  But I did find a few that helped to spark my creativity and they eventually led my to picking my URL.  Check out the tools from “Creativity Tools“, randomphrase.com, and the “Random Technology Phrase Generator“.
2. Use a good WHOIS tool to help you search to see if your word or phrase is available for registration as a domain name.  I really like Geektools and GoDaddy
3. Be prepared to buy your new domain name right away.  Maybe I’m just suspicious, but I’m always afraid that just using one of the WHOIS tools above might trigger someone else to register the domain that you were looking for.  So if you find something that looks like it will work, buy it!  Buy it now!
4. Don’t forget to use a coupon code to make your domain purchase cheaper.  Simply use Google to search for the a coupon or promo code for the domain registrar you plan to use.  Here’s a link to some codes for GoDaddy