Hi JT
Sounds to me like your keyboard settings may have gone on a bit of a US holiday trip😆
You need to reset to GB keyboard by going to control panel (in classic view), selecting Regional and language options and setting regional options to English (United Kingdom) that hopefully should bring things up ok.
Apparently in XP, software can change the keyboard layout to suit itself, problems may arise when said software is shutdown without changing back the layout.
😆 suddenly a rush of answers I see 😆
Lightning