Windows + PuTTY + vi and A B C D arrow keys.

Hi, I'm using PuTTY to connect to my server and vi some files. Whenever I go into insert mode and use my keyboard's arrow keys, it goes to the line above and puts a letter in. Basically my arrow keys turn into A, B, C & D and move lines and such. I don't know if it's my keyboard or OS or what. It seems like a client side issue, cause vi works fine at the server with another keyboard. How can I permanently resolve this issue without using H,J,K,L?

I just used PuTTy to connect to 3 machines, FreeBSD, Ubuntu & Gentoo. FreeBSD & Ubuntu are on my LAN & Gentoo is a remote shell. I tested vi on all of them, using the arrow keys, the way you described. They never inserted letters. Then I searched Google. Here is a quote from one site:

The h, j, k, and l commands reflect the arrow keys on those old VT100 terminals, and always work. Sometimes the arrow keys also do the same things, depending on your keyboard:

"Depending on your keyboard"???

Try another keyboard. I have no idea why that would make a difference but that's all I can find.

Yeah I figured it may have been my keyboard, maybe I can map the arrows to the letters lol... I have a Microsoft SideWinder X6

I too have this problem often but only on some servers. I believe it's something to do with the keyboard layout that the server expects. There's a setting for this in PuTTY but I haven't had time to try all combinations to see which works.

I've tried to mess with the PuTTY keyboard settings, maybe I'm changing the wrong one?

I'm running a SideWinder X6 Keyboard on Windows 7 right now, the server box is ArchLinux. Any ideas?

I'm quite sure it's not your keyboard or OS that's causing the problem, but unfortunately I'm not sure what PuTTY setting, if any, might fix it.