Cheers Chris,
Your post on the XBMC home page is the reason I am here - and probably a few of my mates as well. I can't say how impressed I am with Flirc. Its just brilliant. Many thanks to Jason for it's development.
I never knew of that on-screen keyboard. I don't think I have ever ventured into the accessibility options in all my years of using windows - or other OSs for that matter. This little util will help with the fault finding.
I'm testing the windows key + <NUM> option this evening and will update with success or otherwise.