How to avoid keyboard layout automatically changing on windows

"I hope this is the solution you've been looking for.
I just now had the same problem when I was trying to play around with different languages as I will need them in the near future. I noticed that every time I clicked on the ""sound icon"" at the bottom right (I use vista) it will change to Korean input, or maybe if I open Mozilla Firefox, the input will automatically change to Korean (whereas I've been using English the whole time). In short, depending on what program I open up or click on the input language changes....annoying right?
Here is what you want to do if you want the default to be set system-wide regardless of what program you open up:

right click on the language bar, and then settings on the drop down menu,
default input language....select what you want.

D'oh! took me 3 hours to figure out...this should have come to me straight away as I was pretty much born with a computer, by now this should be sort of common sense for me? hehe"

"Georgi's answer is almost definitely why the OP perceives this to be 'automatically', especially being a developer and using all sorts of ctrl-shift, alt-shift combinations.

If you go to Control Panel->Regional and Language Options->Change Keyboards and then modify the Key sequence for the option to switch between input languages"
"Georgi's answer is almost definitely why the OP perceives this to be 'automatically', especially being a developer and using all sorts of ctrl-shift, alt-shift combinations.

If you go to Control Panel->Regional and Language Options->Change Keyboards and then modify the Key sequence for the option to switch between input languages"

"I agree with Gido. On many different machines I've experienced Windows switching my keyboard layouts randomly.

unexist's advice might be helpful for some:

If you don't use both input languages just deinstall the other one.

But I personally use many different keyboard layouts during my daily routine, and don't appreciate them being switched around on me all the time. In English I type in Dvorak. I was forced to install the UK standard QWERTY keyboard by an (otherwise excellent) application I have for learning the Cyrillic keyboard layout (Keyboard Tsar). Even before this, however, I remember my keyboard layout being randomly switched to QWERTY without any intervention on my part. So, for example in a web browser, if I've typed something into a text field and attempt to copy it using CTRL+C, it would send CTRL+R and refresh the page, probably causing me to lose what I had typed! You can imagine how frustrating this might be, especially for a predominantly keyboard-oriented user like myself who multitasks viciously.

I do agree that the default shortcut for switching input languages -- ALT+L-SHIFT could be responsible in some cases -- especially since I sometimes use ALT+SHIFT+TAB to toggle backwards through applications. However, for me, disabling this shortcut has only seemed to work temporarily. Invariably, after disabling it, I will check on the setting a day or two later and find it enabled again! Anyway I've experienced problems with randomly-changing keyboard layouts in Windows XP for such a long time, and I feel sure that much of the time it couldn't possibly be due to my accidentally hitting this shortcut.

I think that a third-party application for better controlling keyboard layouts would be extremely useful. It could have the features to set the keyboard layout system-wide, or to set permanent, automatic keyboard layouts associated with different applications. For example, when I open my Spanish-English dictionary program, it could automatically switch the layout for that application to Spanish international. And it could prevent Windows from capriciously switching layouts, as it seems so fond of doing.

PS, @Adam: Windows manages keyboard layouts per-application. As I touched on in the previous paragraph I'm not always fond of this either, as sometimes I wish to work in a particular language system-wide, and have to change each individual application to that language's layout individually. However, a possible workaround for you -- if you want each application to open with the Korean layout -- is to set the Korean layout as your default input layout. Of course I can understand that this might not be the ideal solution for you, as you may also use English heavily at other times and just end up with the opposite problem if you switched the default to Korean. But I thought I'd just enlighten you about the logic of Windows with regard to this 'feature': in theory, each running application should launch with the system default layout, then remember whichever layout you switch to until it is closed."

I found the simple solution or the real problem for me. I'm using WinXP and installed Urdu keyboard along with English. I had this setup before but never had problem until now. After some frustration and looking around I found the problem. XP was installed using English language. The "Default input Language" (through Regional and Language Options, Language Tab, Details Button, Settings Tab) was accidently set to Urdu. When I changed it back to English - US, the problem is fixed.