How can I get Chinese/Japanese characters to display properly instead of squares?

Anonymous
2009-11-25T18:51:47+00:00

I'm using Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and I have some songs in Chinese and Japanese.  In Windows Explorer, the characters would SOMETIMES show correctly and sometimes they would be blocks.  Whenever I use iTunes, they're always in blocks and in other programs (ex. synctoy 2.1 and google chrome). I've already installed the Chinese (Trad. and Simplified) and Japanese language packs but the file names still show up in blocks. I also restarted several times after installation of the languages to see if that fixed things but it didn't. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Anonymous
2010-03-16T00:54:57+00:00

Okay fine.... I stopped being lazy and found the solution by trial and error. So the trick is to change the system locale to Chinese (PRC) and then changing the system locale back to English (United States). I can now see the Simplified Chinese characters correctly in my buddyllist as well as in browser titles. I've attached a screenshot of the menus to get to the system locale. Basically go where you changed your input method and follow the screenshot below:

http://www.twitpic.com/18uhgc

This is a bug with the IME, I think, but nothing a few changes and reboots won't fix! Good luck!

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-11-06T02:47:46+00:00

    Anyone interested in help with getting Windows XP to display Chinese characters, this is an easy to follow step-by-step explanation: http://mandarin.about.com/od/characters/ss/display\_chars.htm

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-09-26T08:36:52+00:00

    Okay fine.... I stopped being lazy and found the solution by trial and error. So the trick is to change the system locale to Chinese (PRC) and then changing the system locale back to English (United States). I can now see the Simplified Chinese characters correctly in my buddyllist as well as in browser titles. I've attached a screenshot of the menus to get to the system locale. Basically go where you changed your input method and follow the screenshot below:

    http://www.twitpic.com/18uhgc

    This is a bug with the IME, I think, but nothing a few changes and reboots won't fix! Good luck!

    This has been the best advice so far, quick, simple, and hassle free, better than the solutions provided by 'experts'. Thanks.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-08-16T18:28:13+00:00

    To avoid confusion & duplication of effort, please post any/all further follow-up in replies to your own, new thread => http://answers.microsoft.com/thread/a102f90d-d8d0-4014-9cb7-3162505f63d0

    Thank you.

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-08-14T03:13:57+00:00

    the replacing the name of the recycle bin with asian characters proved only to be a temporary fix

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