I believe you are talking about a different layout, "US International with dead keys". I'm talking about "AltGr dead keys", in which the quotes are available d

I believe you are talking about a different layout, "US International with dead keys". I'm talking about "AltGr dead keys", in which the quotes are available directly and the accents are entered using e.g. AltGr-'. It's not available out of the box in Windows but you can easily find ready to install layouts online.