Symbols appear instead of letters/numbers when typing on Mac

Solution 1:

Your qwertyuiop result indicates that your machine thinks that both option and shift are being held down while you type. The symbols are not random but exactly what is supposed to happen when those keys are depressed. Normally this would indicate a damaged keyboard, especially if you try another one and it works ok.

Solution 2:

This issue has happened to me a couple of times, and I found this question while googling, and the answer that worked for me was on the Mac forums. What worked for me was restarting and while the Apple image appears alone on the screen, press and hold the following command sequence until the login prompt again reappears.

Command + Option + P + R