FAQ: Chinese Characters Will Not Display
in Some Applications or Web Pages on
an English Language Windows System
The Chinese characters in one of my programs and on some web pages are showing up as "???", boxes and other garbage characters. Do I need a Language Pack? Help!!! 
Chinese should display automatically in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, or after you have enabled East Asian languages in Windows XP. No Language Packs or MUI bundles are necessary for this. If you see Chinese on some web pages but not all, or if Chinese in some but not all applications looks like the dialog box above, don't worry! You do not need to upgrade Windows.
I have received this question regarding Chinese IM chat clients (like Sina UC, shown above), Chinese MP3 filenames, software from Taiwan and the mainland, even US versions of QuickBooks that used to accept Chinese characters in text fields until the user upgraded or moved to a new system. I also get the same question from people who see Chinese on some but not all Chinese websites. Most problems like these can be fixed with the solutions I describe below.
If Chinese won't display on web pages:
If you're using Windows XP, make sure you have enabled East Asian languages. (In Windows 7 and Vista you do not need to do this.) Then, if a Chinese website is still not showing hanzi correctly, here's how to fix this in Internet Explorer 7 or 8:
(You shouldn't need to do this for Baidu.com, this screen shot is just an example.)
Go to the Page menu, select Encoding, and try Chinese encodings specific to the region where the site is based. Most of them will be under "More" until you start using them. You don't really need to know what these are in detail, but if you are curious I've provided a summary of Chinese encoding standards here.
In Internet Explorer 6 look in the "View" menu for "Encoding". In the Firefox "View" menu you'll find "Character encoding". In Safari at the top right click the little page icon and in the menu you'll see "Text Encoding". In Google Chrome, at the top right click the little page icon and in the menu you'll see "Encoding". Most other browsers offer the same options as well. If you need help finding this, contact me anytime.
If Chinese won't display in applications:
If you're using Windows XP, make sure you have enabled East Asian languages. (In Windows 7 and Vista you do not need to do this.) Then, if a Chinese application on your PC is still not showing hanzi correctly, you have two choices:
- Install the free AppLocale utility from Microsoft
- Change the entire system to a new locale
Warnings:
- The following suggestions are primarily for applications created in and intended for a Chinese locale, i.e. usually installed on 100% Chinese language systems.
- QuickBooks won't be helped by AppLocale. Skip to Option 2: Change Locale.
- Outlook can behave strangely with these, see my article on Outlook & locales.
- Any application that has its own way of handling languages may not respond well to either of these options.
Option 1: Microsoft AppLocale
AppLocale  is a free download from Microsoft that runs a simple "wizard" to help you run non-Unicode applications or mix locales for other reasons, without changing your entire system's locale to another language. Although originally released for XP, I've tested AppLocale in Windows 7 with no problems.
You can use AppLocale to run an application once, or you can have it create a shortcut to run the app with these settings every time. You may need to run AppLocale as an Administrator the first time you use it on an application, but after a shortcut is created any user can run it. By default it drops the shortcut into AppLocale's folder in the Start menu. From there you can move the shortcut wherever you want. AppLocale will nag you every time you start it, telling you that this is a "temporary solution" and that you can change your entire locale instead. Duh. Just ignore that.
In this example I used the AppLocale wizard to install Sina UC in Windows 7. First I selected the Sina UC installer:
AppLocale automatically detected Simplified Chinese:
Then I had it launch the installer. Compare this to the first screen shot on this page:
After installing, the next step is to run the AppLocale wizard on the Sina UC application itself, and create a shortcut that always runs the app using the Simplified Chinese locale settings. Every time you launch it, AppLocale will pop up a little message saying that Microsoft considers this a "temporary solution", but yeah right it's been "temporary" since at least 2003 and this problem is not going away anytime soon so just dismiss that message and keep using AppLocale.
Sound like a plan? Then go ahead and download AppLocale from Microsoft!
The installer needs to be run with Administrator priviledges, which many of you may already have and don't even know it. But Windows 7 or Vista may give you an error message like this: "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor." You can't right-click on the installer to get a "Run as Administrator" option, so if you get that message your best option is to install via the command line.
This may not be necessary so don't worry, first just download the installer and double-click on it to see what happens. But if you get that error message here is a link to good instructions on installing AppLocale from the command line.
Option 2: Change system locale
If you frequently use many non-Unicode applications, you may want to change the locale for the entire system.
This change is not permanent, you can reverse it. If other applications begin behaving strangely you can switch this back to the original setting with no permanent damage...with one small exception: some programs select their display language the first time they run and will not change again unless you uninstall and reinstall them with the system locale set to the language you want.
 Go to the Windows Start menu and click on "Control Panel". In XP Classic view double-click on "Regional and Language Options". In XP Category view click on "Date, Time, Language and Regional Options". In Vista or Windows 7 Control Panel Home click on "Clocks, Language and Region". Then click "Regional and Language Options" (XP, Vista) or "Region and Language" (Win 7) to bring up the control panel.
 Click the "Administrative" tab.
Then, under "Language for non-Unicode Programs":
In Windows XP you'll see a pull-down menu of languages right there. (Do not mess around with the "Code page conversion tables", just the menu in the area above.)
In Windows Vista and Windows 7 you'll have to first click the "Change system locale..." button before finding that menu.
<--- This is the screen shot for Vista. In Windows 7 the same button is in the bottom half of this same tab in this same control panel, just to make life interesting for me.
In the drop-down menu, change the system locale to Chinese (Simplified, PRC), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) or whatever language you need. Then click "OK" as needed to get back out of the control panel, and restart your system.
As I said, this change is not permanent so if you see instability in other applications like Chinese characters showing up where they don't belong, switch back and use AppLocale. I also recommend changing this setting back to English each time you install new software unless you don't mind if it might install entirely in Chinese. I was forced to have some fun with all Chinese menus in what I had thought was a US-only version of a Nero disc buring app (it was good practice for me, I guess) but eventually I uninstalled it and then reinstalled with the system locale set back to English.
Any questions? Contact me anytime.
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