Why are my quotation marks not appearing until I double space?

[Trouble with quotation marks]

When I try to enter my closing quotation marks, they do not appear until I
double space. When I try to enter my opening quotation marks folowed by an
"O", they do not appear. Instead the following symbol appears, Ö. Can
anyone help?

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

You've switched to a different (electronic) keyboard, made for typing
a different language (probably German). If you don't ever need to be
able to type German(?) efficiently, then go to Start > Control Panel >
Regional and Language Options and remove the keyboard(s) that aren't
for your variety of English. (The details vary between XP and Vista.)

If you need to keep the keyboard(s) available, you can toggle/cycle
through them with LeftAlt+Shift.

OTOH, maybe you have a laptop where the different languages are built
into the keyboard, in which case somwhere there's a key that switches
between them.