Recently I intalled Windows XP and I was asked to select an option in the language settings. Though I am used to English (United States). I picked English (United Kingdom) as Indian English is closely resembles it. But the problem is that the special characters such as @#$%$#% have got all mingled up on my keyboard. When I press shift+2, I get double quotes(") and when I press shift+" I get -@. I changed the languge back to English Us from a language bar thing on the taskbar. But this changes back to UK when I boot. How can I permanently fix this?

Manvinder,

Try Control Panel/Regional and Language Options. You can even set it to 'Australian English'!

That Didnt work. My Regional and Language options say English US. But the Language Bar on the taskbar says English UK.

By the Way Ozzz:
My 'Australian English' is 'All Froth and No Beer' and makes me 'Spit the dummy' and 'Bail my computer up', Mate.

My sister had the same problem (with Dutch and US English) and she said she fixed it by doing the following.

1. Go to the Control Panel>>Regional and Language
Options>>Languages

2. Click on Details(under Text Services and Input Languages).

You should see something called "Installed Services" now. You can use the "Add" or the "Remove" button to add and remove languages/keyboards.

For pictures to go along with these instructions:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/xpintlsupp.mspx

By the way, an easy way to switch between two keyboard settings is by pressing either Alt-Shift or Ctrl-Shift (I've heard both options and as I'm not on XP myself, I can't test it).

[edited to fix typo]

Thanks a lot Leau. But Its now fixed. I removed English(UK) from the list of installed languages.

Along the same lines...When some people post with quotation marks that show up as astericks, is that a problem with the keyboard configuration? Just curious.