Thanks for your help Ronni, the missing !s have returned.
Quentin Hall, on the MacEd mailing list, led me to a solution.
This was the clue, discovered when I searched for a way to follow
Quentin's advice - "try clearing the NVRAM":
"Disable Startup Items. In the same vein, there's nothing wrong with
Startup Items, but when troubleshooting problems, an important step
is to disable programs that automatically start up. In OS X 10.2,
they are found in System Preferences > Login Items, or you can look
in the Terminal at /Library/StartupItems. The similarly-named /System/
Library/StartupItems should be left alone."
Found at http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
Unfortunately I didn't keep a list of the items I deleted so can't
advise as to the culprit. I should have deleted them one at a time.
Also Ronni, in response to your advice:
On 9 Apr 2006, at 8:36am, Ronda Brown wrote:
On 08/04/2006, at 9:00 PM, Reg Whitely wrote:
Dear WAMUGgers
I've got a little problem with my G4 PowerBook 15".
It has lost its *!*.
A couple of things you could try.
1.Check System Preferences > International. In the Input Menu check
only Australian is ticked.
Also check your Character Palate is set to Roman.
All done. Nothing strange here.
2.Have you got 'Speakable Items' on?
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25553>
"When Apple Speakable Items is on, one key on the keyboard may not
work if it's set as the Listening Key. This document applies to Mac
OS X 10.1 or later.
Your keyboard works fine, except for one key. If you change
keyboards, the same thing happens. If you log in using a different
account, the same keyboard responds OK.
The key that doesn't work may be set as the Speech Listening Key.
Follow these steps to choose a different key:
From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Speech.
Click the Speech Recognition tab and then the Listening tab.
Click the Change Key button.
Press a different key to use, such as the Escape key (esc).
Click OK."
No, Speakable Items was off, but I checked the settings and the
Escape key was set. I think this is the default key. That was a great
lead though and I'll archive it for future reference.
So for now, all my !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!s are back!
Regards
Reg
