How to change your Virtual Machine keyboard on Windows 2008 R2
So in the past I’ve download Virtual Machines that have a US keyboard as the input type or when I built the windows instance I forgot to change the keyboard settings. As a result when I have passwords with the ampersand symbol (@) in them, I need to use the Shift + 2 (“) keyboard stroke. So hey you can live with this setting, but I quite like having my keyboard and regional settings configured correct on the server. So this is easy enough through Control Panel > Region and Language settings. So you change your Format to English (Ireland) so that the date time is correct. You change your location for your locale setting to Ireland. You then change your Keyboard and Languages to English (Ireland) – Irish. You test typing your password in notepad and are happy that changes have been made. You then log off your computer or reboot and go to log back on… wait a minute you try your new keyboard settings and you still have to use Shift + 2 to log in. You go and open notepad again and hey presto your keyboard settings are still in English (Ireland) – Irish. What gives!?!
The solution is actually under the Region and Language > Administrative tab. There is a section for the Welcome screen and new user accounts, click the Copy Settings… button, you’ll notice that the Input Language for the Welcome Screen and the New User Accounts is still English (United States) – US. This is not what we want. Select both the check boxes to copy your current settings to the Welcome Screen and New User Accounts and click OK. Log off and back on and there you have it you can log on using the expected keyboard behaviour.
