My windows keyboard is being "clever" with the quote keys - how can I stop it?

I would first make sure that your "input method" settings is set to "US" (and definitely not "United States-International"). You can do this through the Control Panel. A restart may be required.

For Windows 7:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Click on Clock, Language, and Region, and then Region and Language.
3. Click the Keyboards and Languages tab, and then click Change keyboards.
4. Under Installed services, click Add.
5. Double-click the language you want to add, double-click Keyboard, select the text services options you want to add, and then click OK.

See also:

• Add or change an input language (archived),
  with video and hidden text (click on “Show all”)
• Language bar missing from taskbar, which appears to contain the same information

For Windows 10:

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Click on Clock, Language, and Region and then click on Language.
3. If you don't see a card reading "English (United States)" in the list, click on "Add a language" on the toolbar to add it.
4. On the same row belonging to the "English (United States)" card, make sure there is a line reading "Keyboard layout: US". If it does not (that's the assumption of this answer), click on the "Options" hyperlink belonging to the same line, to the left.
5. In the "Input method" section, click on the "Add an input method" hyperlink to add a keyboard layout called "US". Delete any other installed input methods pertaining English.

See also:

• Add and switch input and display language preferences in Windows 10

In the case of Windows 8/10 (not the question, I know) - these accent keys are active when the keyboard is US International (US INTL), and will be deactivated if you change to US ENG.

You can switch between the two using the short-cut "WindowsKey + Space".

Also, if you look at the desktop taskbar (bottom of screen) - to the left of the Date/Time display, you should see a tile displaying the current keyboard (in this case US ENG or US INTL) - click on it to bring up a selector.

You probably inadvertently pressed ctrl shift '.

This is a windows shortcut that affects some applications (examples include: mIRC, gtalk, wordpad, etc) and causes the behavior you are describing. Pressing the shortcut again or restarting the computer will disable it (and hence Dmnisih's answer is incorrect).