When you press and hold a key down, after a brief or long delay, the character will begin to repeat. This is useful when scrolling through documents with the cursor keys as you do not need to keep hitting a cursor key every time you want to move in the document.

Keyboard repeating, however, is not limited to cursor keys, and if you are typing a document and accidentally hold a key down too long, it will rrreeeeeepeat. The amount of time you must hold down a key, as well as the speed of the keyboard repeating, can be modified in Windows XP so that characters should not repeat so frequently.

1. Click the "Start" button, selecting "Settings" - "Control Panel".

2. If you are in the Control Panel's Category View, click "Printers and Other Hardware", then click "Keyboard". Otherwise, double-click the "Keyboard" icon.

3. When the "Keyboard Properties" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, make sure the "Speed" tab is selected.

4. Underneath "Repeat Delay", move the slider to the left to force a long delay before a pressed character repeats. If desired, move the slider to the right to shorten the delay.

5. Underneath "Repeat rate", move the slider to the left to repeat characters slowly once Windows notices a character should be repeated. Move the slider to the right to cause a quicker character repeat.

6. If desired, you can type in the textbox underneath "Click here and hold down a key to test repeat rate" to try out your new settings.

7. Click "OK" on the dialog box to close it, and then close the Control Panel window.

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