Copy and past it from here £ $ € # | ¦ ~ @

You can probably even paste in password strings rather than typing them. That gives you a quick workaround.

Your keyboard may support British Pound signs, but you may need to change keyboard drivers. Pasting a password may be a quick method. Key combinations may work, certainly in some applications, but that is unlikely to help in a live password situation.

Just a thought.
I hope your system is password protected.

Choose passwords with care if for instance you use the recovery Console (advanced optional feature on XP but a life saver sometimes) make sure it has a password you can type from the keyboard, and take care with the characters use; maybe do not include a British Pound sign. (Other characters may be in unexpected positions also, or absent! )

Hold down the Alt key, on the numerical keypad press 0163, then release the Alt key.

Launch Character Map and copy the character to the clipboard.

Use an extension like Zombie Keys.

See also:

• http://www.alt-codes.net/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Alt_keycodes

Thank you, it worked