Today my laptop keyboard went “bung”
For some reason it decided to lock into the numeric pad?
For example, when I typed the P, * would be shown. When I typed L, 3 would be shown, M would show 0…
I could not type a question as to how to remedy the situation because of this glitch.
At a loss, I went to the computer repair shop 5km away. Explained my dilemma, he said, "Ah yes, I know there is a fix for this, let me think.
He jockeyed around the keyboard until he found the fix.
Combined Alt - F12 remedied the situation.
It does happen I’m afraid. In their effort to make all technology do ever more complex things, the tools which were supposed to make things easier, also got more complex. Take your keyboard as an example. The only reason the letters are arranged in a QWERTY fashion is to prevent the hammers jamming from typical letter sequences…but how many of us use a traditional typewriter now?
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Really makes me cross when new “updates” throw up unwanted consequences.
I’m afraid the level of regression testing means that is something that happens a lot. In effect, organizations use their customers as the testers and only fix things that annoy enough people
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There is also the Dvorak keyboard which was designed in the 1930s by a bloke named, believe it or not, Dvorak.
It was designed to make typing English easier and quicker with less finger movements for common letters. I do recall that in the early days of computers it was a keyboard option. However as you point out the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow typists down yet a replacement has never caught on.
As for speed, in my days of maintaining teleprinters (well, one of my jobs at the Dover RSG and exchanges in the 1960s) there were very few operators who could not jam those because they were mostly mechanical - five bars sliding across at every keystroke. Easy but annoying to fix as I remember.
Did you try turning it off and on again 
Probably actually needed a restart which that doesn’t do.
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I did turn it off for 5 minutes. That never worked. So I went to the fix it shop. 
If you have a smartphone you could have googled the answer.
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Old school. No smart phone. Will delay getting one for as long as possible.
Most times there are other options.
Unfortunately just turning it off is not enough because I suspect you have got the fast startup turned on (by default) and it reloads all the previous false settings when you power up.
To clear all the garbage you need to do a reset. You can turn fast start off if you don’t mind the computer taking a few seconds longer to get to the log in screen. (That’s how I have my laptop - it only takes about 1.5 seconds longer)
See if it suits you:
Control Panel > Power Options > Choose what the power button does > Change settings that are currently unavailable > Turn on fast startup (it’s a tick box)