Modem+soundboard+keyboard

Hi all,

I have 3 annoying problems (unrelated to each other). I'd be glad if anyone
would find some time to kindly suggest me something, regarding any of those
problems.
I look after 2 computers in my house, one [A] running Japanese XP Home
(Athlon XP 2600+, MSI K7N2, SB Audigy, DX9.0b, PS/2 keyboard) and the other
[b] running Japanese XP Professional (Athlon TB 900 w/English keyboard).
And the problems are:

Problem #1: On computer [b], when using the default Japanese IME (a text
service), although the connected keyboard has English 101 layout, the
characters come out like the Japanese 106 layout was presumed. For some
reason I had no option to select the kayboard layout during the Windows
installation (normally it should appear on Japanese systems) and I can't
find the way to fix it afterwards (I believe I went through most of the
keyboard/regional settings and didn't yet find anything useful). Yes, I can
install the English text service and the keyboard will then be English too,
but that's not the solution. What I need is an English layout w/Japanese
IME. Any suggestions?

Problem #2: On computers [A] and [b] I use the same type of PCI modem, which
is Pentagram HeX2 56I. On both computers I quite often get disconnected from
the dial-up internet connection with no apparent reason (sometimes quickly,
sometimes after a while, sometimes not at all). The cables seem fine, the
drivers are new and in the connection settings I tried to limit the max.
transfer rate to 56600 kbps (instead of the default 115200) to prevent
choking. Didn't work, still both modems randomly stop responding and hang
up. Are there any settings I should try? Can this be a problem of the
telephone line? How to overcome it?

Problem #3: On computer [A] when listening to the music or game SFX,
everything seems fine. But when I type the keyboard, from time to time I get
loud popping short hiss noises. I observed it most annoying when listening
to Winamp 2.91 (1 key out of 10-20 produces the noise, playing around output
plugins and their settings didn't help), a bit annoying when playing RS3:
Raven Shield (infrequent random popping noises when 2-3 keys are pressed at
the same time for a few seconds) and NOT present at all while listening to
Windows Media Player (version 8). I haven't tested other applications, so I
can't tell more, but I'm sure there are more affected. I've checked the
conflicts with System Info and the only IRQ conflict is between OpenHCD USB
Host Controller and NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Adapter, which have nothing
to do with the problem (I guess). I have also a couple of I/O port and
Memory Address conflicts, one of which is the I/O Port conflict betwen
Creative SB Audigy and PCI-to-PCI bridge. Is this the reason? What should I
investigate next?

Thank you very much for your patience reading this post and many thanks in
advance for any help or comments you would kindly provide.

F. Adam Okazaki