Unusual corruption of backslash into letter W with horizontal line thru it

[rwfromkansas]

I have this weird problem in that a lot of times when I try to type a backslash, it looks like a W with a horizontal line through it.

Now, here is the weird thing. It does not do it when I type online in a form like here. Here the \ works fine. But, in some other programs, it does not work correctly when I type it. And, when I try to type a \ in the URL address box of both IE and Firefox, it looks like the W with the horizontal slash in the middle of the letter.

It works fine in Microsoft Word, but the most obvious problem is when I try to install a new program or I see the backslashes in the address of a file on the computer (such as when I look to see the path of a program in the Start Menu).

In these cases, I do see the W with the horizontal line, not the backslash.

It doesn't appear the keyboard is defective, but something is not being interpreted correctly by the computer in SOME programs.

Any idea what this may be? It is not a problem causing major problems....it isn't like my files are becoming screwed up and the locations are fine, but is a bit grating to see the backslash being misinterpreted by the computer in a really weird way.

One of my college roomates was from S. Korea and he installed Korean language support so he could use my Word, but I uninstalled that and still have a problem. The default language in the Windows XP region/language settings is English US.

I had some problems in IE (not Mozilla though) in which the language looked Korean or oriental of some sort on some pages....it would screw up and look weird on some sites like Launchcast in a couple spots (not the entire website), but since I don't use IE anymore, I ignored the issue. Should I try uninstalling IE? These may be connected possibly.

Yesterday, I had some weird thing happen to me when I tried to update my NVidia drivers. I downloaded the English version supposedly, but the install program had Chinese or Korean or something written instead. I don't know how that happened....every other install I have tried has worked just fine. The only issue is the install address will have the W w/a horizontal line instead of the backslash, but the install instructions were in English. Perhaps NVidia screwed up their installs, I don't know.

I think this problem with the backslash has been going on for a couple months, and I just don't know what may have precipitated it. If anybody has any ideas on a fix, let me know.

[confus-ed]

..One of my college roomates was from S. Korea and he installed Korean language support so he could use my Word, but I uninstalled that and still have a problem. The default language in the Windows XP region/language settings is English US..

Welcome to wd forums RW.

This must be 'it' especially since you metioned earlier about some web pages & applications sometimes displaying characters different which sounds like 'unicode/non-unicode' coming into play (that's to do with character sets) - so I'm thinking that you just need to plough through ALL of the settings found in control panel under 'regional & language options' ..