I am used to typing eg alt + 130 to get an e with an acute accent. All
of a sudden this has stopped working. Num Lock is on. I am running
Windows XP Professional SP2. If I use fast user switching to switch to
my wife's account, it works fine. If I boot to DOS with my pen drive it
works fine also. Any ideas?

Use the left Alt key, not the right Alt key.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In news:(E-Mail Removed),
(E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)> hunted and pecked:
> I am used to typing eg alt + 130 to get an e with an acute accent. All
> of a sudden this has stopped working. Num Lock is on. I am running
> Windows XP Professional SP2. If I use fast user switching to switch to
> my wife's account, it works fine. If I boot to DOS with my pen drive it
> works fine also. Any ideas?

Wesley Vogel wrote:
> Use the left Alt key, not the right Alt key.
>
> --
> Hope this helps. Let us know.

Sorry I didn't make it clear. I always use the left Alt key. On my UK
keyboard the right Alt key is labelled "Alt Gr". I only noticed this
yesterday. A change of keyboard makes no difference.

Beats me.

Here's some info on the AltGr key so that this won't be a total loss.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key

As far as I know you need a 3rd party program or a script to disable the Alt
key.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In news:(E-Mail Removed),
(E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)> hunted and pecked:
> Wesley Vogel wrote:
>> Use the left Alt key, not the right Alt key.
>>
>> --
>> Hope this helps. Let us know.
>
> Sorry I didn't make it clear. I always use the left Alt key. On my UK
> keyboard the right Alt key is labelled "Alt Gr". I only noticed this
> yesterday. A change of keyboard makes no difference.

Wesley Vogel wrote:
> Beats me.
>
> Here's some info on the AltGr key so that this won't be a total loss.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key
>
> As far as I know you need a 3rd party program or a script to disable the Alt
> key.

The Alt key on its own does everything it should, as far as I can see -
for example a single press highlights 'file' on the menu bar of Windows
Explorer, or whatever application has focus. Alt + tab invokes the task
switcher, etc.

What is definitely not happening is the production of the foreign
accented characters when I set num lock ON, and hold down the alt key
and type the appropriate numerical code on the keypad.

When I either switch users to my wifes account or log off and then log
on as her, everything works fine.

I would like to see an update to this issue.
I too am having this issue.

WinXP SP2

What's occurring?
When I use the ALT+Numpad, I only get circles and the deck of card suits
(spade, heart, club, diamond).

Do you think I should be setting something in my Regional/Language settings?
I don't see why, and if so... I wouldn't have a clue on what to click and
install. I'm in the US, English.

Thank you for all your replies.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote on Tue, 16 Jan 2007:

>I am used to typing eg alt + 130 to get an e with an acute accent. All
>of a sudden this has stopped working. Num Lock is on. I am running
>Windows XP Professional SP2. If I use fast user switching to switch to
>my wife's account, it works fine. If I boot to DOS with my pen drive it
>works fine also. Any ideas?
>

It may be related to the font you're using, and/or your browser (updated
lately?:-) Not all characters are available in all typefaces. It could
be that your wife's account has a different font set as default in her
Word, Notepad or whatever.

Does Alt+0233 work for your e-acute (é)? Most characters are available
on more than one code. Here's a useful list:

http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards.asp

Instead of memorising the Alt-key combinations I like to use a tiny free
program called AllChars, available here:

http://allchars.zwolnet.com/

It allows you to type special characters using much easier to remember
combinations such as e and apostrophe for e-acute, c and comma for
c-cedilla and so on. Very highly recommended.

--
Nightowl

I notice that the alt+numpad only works in Wordpad. Ironically, it doesn't
work in Word.

I chose the same font type in each program. The browser, I use the default
and it's NEVER given me the problem before, until I installed XP on my new
system.

Yes, I am always up to date on my browser (primary is Firefox). Both FF and
IE7 give me same results for directly type characters. They don't if I
copy/paste from Wordpad or Character Map.

233 doesn't work. Gives me a circle.

I hear A LOT about Allchars from other communities that have people speaking
of the same issue as this topic (therefore, there has to be a solution
somewhere), but I pretty much got used to years of using alt+num that I don't
want to change. The primary character I use is the copyright.

Thanks for your reply.


"Nightowl" wrote:

> (E-Mail Removed) wrote on Tue, 16 Jan 2007:
>
> >I am used to typing eg alt + 130 to get an e with an acute accent. All
> >of a sudden this has stopped working. Num Lock is on. I am running
> >Windows XP Professional SP2. If I use fast user switching to switch to
> >my wife's account, it works fine. If I boot to DOS with my pen drive it
> >works fine also. Any ideas?
> >
>
> It may be related to the font you're using, and/or your browser (updated
> lately?:-) Not all characters are available in all typefaces. It could
> be that your wife's account has a different font set as default in her
> Word, Notepad or whatever.
>
> Does Alt+0233 work for your e-acute (é)? Most characters are available
> on more than one code. Here's a useful list:
>
> http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards.asp
>
> Instead of memorising the Alt-key combinations I like to use a tiny free
> program called AllChars, available here:
>
> http://allchars.zwolnet.com/
>
> It allows you to type special characters using much easier to remember
> combinations such as e and apostrophe for e-acute, c and comma for
> c-cedilla and so on. Very highly recommended.
>
> --
> Nightowl
>

Kevin, just a thought. . . if you go to:
Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Advanced and look in the
Code Pages section, do you have 1252 and 437 checked?

--
Nightowl