Yep, the paper strip with the ALT-numbers was laziness: not needed to learn them by head: Alt130=é, Alt131=â, etc. 
the problem still persists.
Any help is appreciated.
Happens out of the blue often enough to be annoying. Love to be able to turn it off/stop it.
In post #17, @Francky clearly described his research into this issue which explained exactly how and when it can happen. It seems to be a Microsoft design feature. Have you read his post thoroughly? It sounds like your responsibility to learn to avoid the “feature”. It is hard to fix something that isn’t broken.
I don’t know if you are still having this problem, but I have had this happening to me since I got my laptop nearly 2 years ago and finally got around to trying to find a solve for it online. I have figured it out, so in case it helps you too, here’s what you’ll need to do:
In your Control Panel, find Languages (in mine Windows 7, I go under “Region and Language”. Amazing by the way, that I was just able to type those quotes successfully!
Then go to “Keyboards and Languages”, and select “Change Keyboards”. I bet you have English US - International for your keyboard. You need to add English US. You will see down below that now you have English US - International AND English US. You need to use the “Remove” button for the English US - International.
When I first tried it, I didn’t get do the “remove” step and my problem got worse! Started adding those extra umlauts above my vowels. Once I did the “remove” step, the entire issue was resolved. I hope this helps you!
1 Like
It’s not necessarily “broken”, you are correct! But in fact, there is a way to resolve the issue that is being experienced and that is what rockerz was attempting to do. I hope I’ve helped.