Keyboard not working properly when remoting into Ubuntu 12.10 via tightvnc

Question

I have an interesting problem that I can't seem to fix. I am running into the problem outlined here and there is a solution posted by user ecadman. However, the steps to fix it are:

1. Alt+F2
2. gconf-editor
3. /->app->metacity->global_keybindings
4. Change the assigned keystroke for show_desktop from Super+D to Ctrl+D or Ctrl+Alt+D or disabled.

and I do not have a global_keybindings folder under metacity. I also am missing a gnome_settings folder under apps, which was another workaround.

Other notable problems, all keyboard related, are: I cannot access the keyboard layout settings, and the on-screen keyboard has all question marks over the letters and says X keyboard cannot be found, retrying on the spacebar.

Other than the D key not causing input and instead triggering the shortcut, the rest of the keyboard works fine. I even went into the keyboard settings in both gnome and Ibus and disabled the hide all windows shortcut (in gnome settings) and tried to disable the D key from triggering shortcuts (in Ibus settings).

I'm not really sure where to go from here. It's a standard en-us keyboard. I also do not have local access to this machine, but do have full ssh access and can add whatever else I need if necessary.

Solution

Found a solution. While I was simply disabling the key bindings for hide all windows, I simply needed to rebind it to some arbitrary combination and the problem stopped. Hope that helps anyone with the same issue.