BleepingComputer.com: Windows XP Pro SP3: Garbage characters appearing in some apps

Hello, this is my first post to this forum.

I am running an English version of Windows XP Pro SP3 on an Intel-based system in China, on my girlfriends' computer.

The OS is in English so I can do maintenance with minimal bother, and the apps (for the most part,) are in Simplified Chinese, so she can work with minimal bother.

I have Eastern Language Support installed and enabled, and all of the installed IME's work fine. Also, on all installed Adobe and Microsoft apps, the Chinese shows up fine.

However, on kwmusic (a popular chinese music player/search app,) the menus and local content windows only show ????'s and garbage characters instead of Chinese. The online content windows, on the other hand, display the Chinese properly.

Incidentally, the installers for ALL of our Chinese-version apps also display garbage characters instead of Chinese, even though all of the apps but one have no problem after installation.

Just for fun, I tried changing the default non-Unicode language to Simplified Chinese, but that caused the kwmusic app upon opening to return an error screen in garbage characters and ???'s, and shut down immediately. After changing the default non-Unicode language back to US English, it returned to the behavior initially described.

Previously we ran kwmusic on a Simplified Chinese version of XP Home Sp2, and it worked fine.

Please advise.

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this matter.

Problem solved. I guess I was on the right track originally.

When I changed the non-unicode language to Simplified Chinese, I forgot that it might be best to REINSTALL the malfunctioning app after making that change.

I realized this just now, acted accordingly, and now all is fine.

Thanks for letting us know...happy computing .

Louis