
Windows keeps automatically adding EN-US keyboard layout (2016) - punnerud
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/windows-keeps-automatically-adding-en-us-keyboard/69aaea0d-f588-4d54-89fa-a632ae7bced3?page=1
======
beart
I've always enjoyed that the most common response on just about any Windows
support question is something along the lines of

> If you would like too you can do system restore to restore some settings on
> your PC.

~~~
rkachowski
It really frustrates me when I have a specific technical problem with windows
(I only use it for gaming) and search results are full of psuedo mystical tech
advice from community experts advising a system restore or changing registry
values.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
The worst part is that the system restore (or reinstall) advice is often from
some official Microsoft support drone. Microsoft's official stance is "it's
too fucking complicated to even know where to begin, so start over". How is it
that we put up with this bullshit?

~~~
kache_
A lot of us have stopped putting up with it by switching to linux

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
You presume Linux support is any better. You can't lie to me, I've seen it,
I've tried to use it, it is at least as bad. From completely ignoring users
when a canned answer doesn't work (how Microsoft of them) to condescendingly
asking the user "why would you want to do that?" instead of answering their
question, to just plain giving them the wrong fucking answer because it is
outdated or based on some other distro's config.

~~~
AshamedCaptain
The thing is that indeed one of the very valid benefits is that with open
source the solution is almost never "just reinstall". Because at least you
have the tools to investigate and fix the problem right to the deepest level.

E.g. I have an issue where Thunderbolt ports suddenly stop working -- the
symptom is that I hear the device connected chime immediately followed by the
device unconnected chime. Event log is empty. Impossible to debug -- there's
nothing else to tinker with. System restore worked.

Linux -- there is a kernel flag that forces the BIOS to power on the
controller and whatever. Ohmygosh I had to open a terminal, but at least I
didn't had to reinstall.

And please don't come with "given the choice of opening a shell and digging in
or just reinstall, I would choose reinstalling 100% of the time", because then
it answers the question of the OP.

~~~
ufo
In a similar example that is closer to the topic at hand, I recently had an
issue where if I turned on a certain setting it would cause my ç key to become
a ć instead, as an unwanted side-effect. Since everything on Linux is free and
open source, I was able to find and read the source code that was responsible
for my problem, which allowed me to figure out how to workaround the issue for
now, and to file a bug report with the upstream developers.

~~~
Spearchucker
That's a lot of effort when you just. Need. To. Send. An. Email...

~~~
ufo
This bug only affects a very very small number of people so I went through the
effort because if I didn't I doubt anyone else would even notice it:)

~~~
aliswe
That piques my interest. Care to share the ticket?

~~~
ufo
[https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/1951](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/1951)

~~~
aliswe
Good job! Kudos

------
yyyk
I have had this problem as well.

In my case, I correctly removed EN-US, but it turns out that most times when I
connected via RDP Windows automatically readded the layout since it was
available on the connected station.

It's possible to a registry key to disable this behaviour:

Goto HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout and add a new DWORD
Key "IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout" with value "1".

This solved the issue for me, Windows stopped adding EN-US.

~~~
tinus_hn
I would like to state that this behavior is completely and utterly insane. Who
would want this?

~~~
yyyk
I'm no RDP expert at all, but I suspect it's a way of dealing with the RDP
protocol.

As far as I know, RDP doesn't send the letters to the server, but the keyboard
event. So if both sides are using incompatible layouts, you could send "A"
from your client but see a "B" on the RDP server.

I switched en-US for another en layout so it's not a serious problem for me
there, but on non-English languages it can be an issue when the other side
doesn't match at all, and maybe it's a little easier when Windows installs the
layout automatically for the user.

This behaviour would be defencible if only Windows had informed the user, and
allowed the remote desktop client to control it in advance...

~~~
tinus_hn
If you are sending keyboard events, but you really want the typed characters
to match, the solution of course is to send the typed characters instead.

~~~
yyyk
That's the 99% right solution IMHO, the one that covers the main use case
where the other side doesn't have your layout AND you are fine with your
layout, you just want the other side to receive it correctly.

There's also the case when the other side has a layout which you do want to
use but do not have installed. I guess that's rather a rare case - if it's a
desired layout, why wasn't it installed in the first place?

Perhaps MS can't update RDP so trivially, and is stuck with the wrong
architecture for a good while. But at least they could ask before adding a
keyboard layout. Or allow enabling/disabling this as an option on the RDP
client rather than a registry change.

------
dang
This is a follow-up to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20306886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20306886),
which links to [https://yngve.vivaldi.net/2019/06/20/microsoft-keep-your-
han...](https://yngve.vivaldi.net/2019/06/20/microsoft-keep-your-hands-off-my-
keyboard/), which unearthed the OP.

~~~
punnerud
I posted both, hoping to get someone at Microsoft’s attention. I live with
this problem every day at work.

~~~
Const-me
Windows can syncronize settings across devices. Physically, the settings come
from from MS cloud servers. Are you using a local user account, or widnows
live account?

Another source of such issues is settings for default user account. There's a
GUI deep inside control panel to copy profile settings to both default
accounts: [https://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/26/windows-10/copy-
current...](https://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/26/windows-10/copy-current-
language-region-settings-new-user-accounts-windows-10.html) Try to configure
these languages, and copy to both.

Also, if you're on a corporate network, it can be a group policy, or some
other enterprise feature. When a PC joined a domain, domain admins can change
all settings from the central location.

------
dooglius
As a programmer dvorak [0] user, I find that I regularly have to get an admin
to reinstall after a windows update. When all your coders only use en-us and
you don't do solid internationalization testing, this is what happens.

[0]
[https://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/](https://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/)

~~~
rlkf
If this happens often enough to be a nuisance, you could try to install it as
a preload substitute for an official layout (for instance en-US), or have the
admin guys put the Registry settings in an AD group policy.

------
Joeri
Windows syncs keyboard layouts automatically between installations linked to
the same microsoft account. Why anyone would ever want this behavior is beyond
me, but this sounds like the cause of this issue.

[https://superuser.com/questions/961467/how-to-stop-
windows-1...](https://superuser.com/questions/961467/how-to-stop-
windows-10-from-syncing-keyboard-layouts)

------
inlined
Working in Windows I found that there are two magic localizations: non
localized is a default failsafe that is a copy of EN-US. The other fun one is
“pseudo-loc” which is used in testing; it replaces letters with similar ones
that have accents or diacritics to detect hard coded English strings.

I wonder if the EN-US keyboard is actually a fall-through to the non-localized
version when the localized keyboard fails to load.

------
yulaow
I had this problems for years and I thought it was because of some to-me-
unknown combination of keys I was pressing. I don't know now how to feel

~~~
Doxin
Hitting ctrl-shift switches keyboard layout. It also happens to be by far the
easiest shortcut in windows to hit accidentally.

------
nosianu
Note that the keyboard cannot be removed from the GUI - it does not show up.
In the region and keyboard settings I mean, it shows up as configured keyboard
though. What worked for me - and that was the _only_ thing that worked - was
to follow the registry-editing answer here (only the top part of the answer,
not the update):

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_10...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_10-start/cant-remove-a-keyboard-layout-in-
windows-10/058acf33-16d9-47f4-a24b-245b8823d90e)

I had to look through the entire registry for the key mentioned there though,
I had to delete about 4 or 5 before the hidden US keyboard finally
disappeared.

Note that that thread is from 2015. Maybe US based Microsoft would find the
issue more urgent if it was a different keyboard than a US one, so that they
themselves notice it (I guess right now they would not?).

------
brighton36
As a Dvorak user, ive had this problem (or similar ones) for years. I
basically gave up typing in Dvorak on my windows machines (thankfully my
primary desktop is Linux)

~~~
MiddleEndian
As a Dvorak user as well, I've found that as of Windows 10 (and perhaps 8 but
I've not used that extensively), they've finally fixed their multiple layouts
issue. You can disable the nonsense that is "different layouts for different
windows" and get rid of the awful alt-shift abd ctrl-shift shortcuts and just
switch layouts with win-space. I keep qwerty as a layout for when others need
to use my laptop but the OS never unexpectedly switches me anymore. They
finally caught up with classic MacOS lol

------
manjana
Omg, lol. I'm both humored and slightly annoyed by this. Why is this even
enabled as a default.

------
mxscho
I had this problem as well. However, it only appeared when using the English
language pack together with a German keyboard layout. When installing the
German language pack parallel to the English one (and using the German
keyboard layout from that language pack while still having the English
language pack selected for language/region/date), the problem went away.

------
tiagobraw
I also have this problem and to make thing worse my windows not cannot install
upgrades anymore. There's one bad upgrade that fails to install and rollback
just to try again in the next boot, entering a reboot loop.

I had to disable upgrades and I don't really want to format my already
configured OS soon.

------
johnchristopher
Yup. It's like wasd and qwerty. I gave up using the french layout and my own
binding (vbn + right click to move) because I got so tired to fight the
machine's default.

I am quite happy about the layout though :).

------
lousken
Yea, it's been pissing me off for a long time so I've ended up creating my
custom keyboard layout so i don't have to switch between the two

------
AlexCoventry
In fairness, this happens to me in ubuntu from time to time, too. Never been
able to figure out why, but it happens so rarely that I've never really tried.

------
gizmoduck
Title needs (2016), yeah?

~~~
NullPrefix
Still relevant in 2019, though.

