Y and Z keys have switched. Keyboard settings are on QWERTY.

You are using a german keyboard.  Look next to the time and date on the lower quick access bar on desktop, make sure it says "ENG" and not "DEU"

Hello Elvelian,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

This behavior may occur if a US keyboard is not listed in Text Services. The standard keyboard is US, and this must be the only keyboard listed in the Text Services section of Control Panel.

To resolve this issue, remove all instances of keyboards other than the standard US keyboard. To do this, follow these steps.

NOTE: If you press NumLock on the keyboard of certain portable computers, this makes different characters available when you type. To make the keyboard revert to its standard functionality, press FUNCTION+NumLock.

1. Click Start, type Control Panel and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
3. Click the Languages tab.
4. In the Text Services and Input languages pane, click Details.
5. In the Installed Services pane, click any keyboard listed other than US, and then click Remove.
6. When the confirmation message appears, click Yes.
7. Repeat step 5 until all listed keyboards except US are removed.

This issue might be because of device driver. Let’s diagnose the issue using On-Screen Keyboard.

Use the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) to type.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/type-with-the-on-screen-keyboard

If the issue still persists, Refer to these methods in the order in which they are presented and check.

Method 1:

I would suggest you to “Run the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter” by referring this link.

What if a device isn't installed properly: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/what-device-isnt-installed-properly

Method 2:

Uninstall the Keyboard driver, restart the laptop and check. This should fix the issue.

1. Press Windows and R keys together.
2. Type devmgmt.msc, and then click OK.
3. Double-click Keyboard, right-click the keyboard that you use, and then click Uninstall.
4. Restart the computer.
5. First, turn on the device, if you have to, and then plug the device into the computer. Your computer detects the device and then reinstalls the drivers for the device.

Please do let us know the results. Feel free to write us back for any further assistance with Windows, we'll be glad to assist you.

Regards,

Go into your keyboard settings. Choose English. And then choose QWERTY and not QWERTZ. Yes, it's really that simple!

From Wikipedia:

"QWERTZ[edit]

Main article: QWERTZ

The QWERTZ layout is fairly widely used in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and much of Central Europe. The main difference between it and QWERTY is that and are swapped, and some special characters such as brackets are replaced by the diacritical characters Ä, Ö, Ü and ß."

If the German layout is not the required one check your actual language settings. It is possible for the keyboard layout to be different from the overall language setting.

If for example your region is set to US but the keyboard is German change the region to a 3rd value such as Canadian and remove US altogether. Reboot and the change the region back to US and remove the temporary region. Resetting the language will re-align all the options for that language.

It's more than likely a registry problem.  This happened to me so I downloaded one of those registry fixers and sure enough, there were a bunch of errors and running the program fixed the problem.