One day you are merrily typing away as you always have, and all of a sudden you find that what you typed is wrong. You retype it again and find that the key you press is not actually the key that appears! What the??
In my case the @ (SHIFT+2) was being replaced by “ (SHIFT+’). Luckily, I remembered that this had happened before and involved the English pound (£) symbol.
The reason is because I have 2 keyboards types installed on my desktop PC as you can see above. You can view your keyboards by selecting the language icon in the system tray which is next to the clock.
Once I re-selected the English (Australia) keyboard I was back in business with the correct keys.
Always wanting to know how this could happen, I received my answer when I moused over that same icon as shown above. The keyboard is swapped when you press the Windows key + space. I use the Windows key + another key on my keyboard all the time so I had obviously fat fingered the secret sequence to change the default keyboard! The things my subconscious does to try and distract me.
Hopefully, this helps someone else out because it can be very frustrating to solve the first time it happens.
CIAOPS 