New Laptop Teething Problems

[nailit]

Hope someone can help me iron out a few problems.

Have just purchased a second hand laptop from my local market and bought a "3" dongle to access the internet. Havnt had my own computer for a few years and am a bit rusty with technology.
1) the @ sign and the " symbol are in opposite places..(") is above the (2) and (@) is above (') if that makes sense. had this problem some years ago with another computer but cant remember why or how I solved it.

2)have been on lappy for a few hours now and have twice had to unplug dongle and put back in to restart internet as it was saying couldnt access internet...is it just poor signal or fault on lappy?

3) occasionally page seems to move up and down when im navigating curser around page tho I havnt clicked on the up and down "lift" on right side of the page.

any help appreciated, thanks.

[SirOracle]

Your 1st paragraph.....Placing of the symbols appears to be normal.

[nailit]

SirOracle, above the number 2 is the @ sign but pressing that gives me " and vice versa.

[Prudie]

1. that's where the " and @ are on my laptop, that's normal isn't it?

[nailit]

im getting a headache.....

[Old_Geezer]

If I get the wrong things come out on a screen I assume the drivers for a US keyboard are being used. You may wish to check what is set for your keyboard ?

[Old_Geezer]

2) could be either. Difficult to tell without a different way of accessing tyhe Net to narrow down where the issue is. Can you find and download some kind of signal meter maybe ? Not that I know, but one needs to find some way to shed light on it. Can you borrow a good dongle from a friend to try ?

Does your mouse have a thumbwheel that can be accidently pressed in ? Sometimes that does strange things like scroll lock or similar.

[nailit]

OldGeezer, how do I do that? im a bit of a techno thickie ..

[Old_Geezer]

PS serves you right for buying a laptop. :-p In your shoes I'd turn off any touchpad. Accidently brushing that can have devastating effects on one's stress levels.

[nailit]

Aha, av just sussed out number 3.

[nailit]

ur right about stress levels OG, just realised why i havnt had a puter
for years ;-)

[SlackAlice]

1) I think your laptops got a USA Keyboard, differences here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards

[Svejk]

I have a '3' dongle and have to turn the lap-top or the dongle off at regular intervals. I presumed it was normal.

[Old_Geezer]

Sometimes there is an icon bottom right you can click on to check. Otherwise I suspect you could try control panel, device manager and see what there is listed under keyboards ?

[nailit]

Thanks SlackAlice, it does appear as though Ive got a U.S. keyboard, is there anything I can do to make the keys actually correspond to what they have on them?
svejk, it would appear to be the signal on the dongle then.
OG, cant see any icon, am still trying to find my way around a computer again.

[SlackAlice]

If you want to try out a different keyboard layout to match what you've got it's via Control Panel/Region and Language

[nailit]

thank you, I will have to play around with it for a while, like I say, im rusty with computers. Can you tell me where the refresh tab is on google chrome?

[SlackAlice]

Right click on the page and choose 'reload'

[nailit]

Thank you.

[nailit]

Thanks all, have now remidied number 1, think number 2 must be signal on dongle and sussed number 3.
thanks again all.

[TTG]

Try a usb cable extender. It might boost the signal a little.