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

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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
    2011-10-17T05:25:23+00:00

    I had the same problem but just installed the chinese language pack and rebooted and the chinese characters displayed correctly (i.e. I did not change my locale to chinese reboot then change back to english and reboot).

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-10-20T13:12:39+00:00

    Actually, I've experienced this problem recently. I googled and found that it's caused by incorrect setting of font. So, I  tried to restore the font settings to the default and restarted the computer. After that, I found all the characters were displayed correctly!.... but only for a while....

    After I turn the computer off and turn it on the next day, all the characters were displayed as boxes again. To put it simply, my new found solution was only a temporary, the issue would come back every time I shut down the system. Was there any solution for that problem? Was it caused by corrupted registry or fonts?

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-10-29T13:26:43+00:00

    Thanks loads! This solved my problem XD

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-11-07T15:37:29+00:00

    Did you install any new updates before this happened? Sometimes when I install new updates my Japanese and Chinese characters go to little squares. Then when I uninstall the update it goes back to normal.

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