Japan A30 with Win2K Pro English install

[EHGOH]

I recently reinstalled a Japanese keyboard A30 with Win2K Professional (English). It was previously pre-loaded with native Japanese Win2K Professional. Everything seems OK except for slight differences with keyboard mapping. Was wondering if anyone has any idea where to get the correct driver for the A30 with Japanese keyboard. (I cannot read Japanese.....)

[a31pguy]

Did your japanese keyboard have some english lettering on it? When I was there I saw a few with both.

[EHGOH]

Yes, this keyboard does have English lettering. Most of the letters matches the input. There were however some other keys (mainly the punctuation keys) that does not match the input. I figured that maybe the correct keyboard driver should fixed this....

[a31pguy]

I remember while I was there - a util that switches the keyboard from english to japanese and vice versa.

[EHGOH]

Thanks. I will try to find out if I am able to get hold of such an utility. I think the IBM Japan web site may have more info but too bad I cannot understand any Japanese....

[MadeInJapan]

EHGOH-KUN, I'm afraid you'll just have to live with this. In Contorl panel/global settings, in the language and input sections there is some chance that you can get some of the keys to match up to the original but I highly doubt you'll get all to. Just learn where the different keys are (In Japanese windows the back slash is a yen mark, etc). In English windows installation you don't get a chance to select English or Japanese keyboard but in the Japanese installation you do. Many Japanese TP owners are buying very expensive English keyboards for their TP's and reinstalling Japanese windows with the English language keyboard option. Everytime I go to Japan, if I would take a suitcase full of English Thinkpad keyboards I would be wealthy. They loose some of their Japanese punctuation when they install English keyboards but they think it is elite and cool...go figure. Remapping the keyboard is another options but I don't believe it really has anything to do with the drivers for the keyboard. Good luck with your search. I have 2 thinkpads right now that have Japanese keyboards and am running English windows...I've just learned where the English keys are suppose to be and work around this issue.

However, if you really want to try something with the Japanese keyboard drivers, go in to Device driver and click on keyboard and you'll see what drivers are installed for your keyboard. Find a Japanese with the same Thinkpad with Japanese windows (same OS) and see what the drivers are in his. Go to the folders where his drivers are installed and copy them to disc or USB key (whatever). Go then to the folders where these are installed on your computer and rename them with "ENGLISH" at the end of them. After this, put the disc you made with your friend's driver files on them or the USB key (whatever) and update your keyboard drivers with his. You'll probably get a warning that the drivers are not Microsoft Signed, but proceed anyway. You might get lucky. You also might screw things up. If this happens, then delete the files you installed, rename the orignial files back to their original names (remove the "ENGLISH" ) and reboot. Ganbatte, and if you try this, let us know if you were successful or not.