I’ve seen this a few times, and it came up again, so I just wanted to put it somewhere for future reference…

User: Whenever i press the ” ‘ or ~ ` buttons, the characters do not show up until another key is pressed. But if i press a certain vowel after them, different characters pop up like, ä ë ï ö ü à è ì ò ù etc.

Ive tried 2 other keyboards and it didn’t fix the problem. What else could it be? How can i fix it? Its really annoying.

The solution:
You have somehow activated the international keyboard option. Look in your taskbar next to the clock for a small box with a 2-letter code (like “EN” for english). Right click this box and go to Properties to change the settings, or even disable it completely.

If this box isn’t there, you can get to the options by going to Start, Control Panel, Regional and Language options. Once there, go to the Languages tab and hit the “Details” button.
You can enable and disable available languages and even turn the whole option off.