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Last post Author Topic: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro  (Read 25098 times)

Darwin

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Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro
« Reply #25 on: September 26, 2007, 08:19 AM »
Yeah... I'd like to do this as it's a real pain not being able to repair my installation - absolutely asinine if you ask me on the part of the OEM. Anyway, I don't know anyone with a non-OEM copy of XP Pro that I can use to do this. Lots of XP Home and Media Centre users (but again, pretty much all of those will be OEM, too, come to think of it). I might see what I can do for a full copy on ebay or elsewhere on the internet sold as OEM (I'll probably get an ancient soundcard or something for my troubles!). However, my sense is that XP installation disks are still quite pricey - people here are advertising services to dual boot Vista machines, or even wipe them and install XP, around here.

mwang

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Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro
« Reply #26 on: September 27, 2007, 05:20 AM »
This thread reminded me enough of an old itch that I simply have to scratch it, and a new build of Acronis TI Home 10 afforded me the chance (excuse) to restore my system back to an earlier stage and reinstall the nVidia driver (from Windows Update) several times, each time using a different language setting. The finding:

If I synchronize all three language related settings (Date-Num etc. format, location, system locale a.k.a default language for non-Unicode programs), then the nVidia item on the desktop context menu (the one that shows question marks on the screenshot I posted last time) would be normal, displaying "NVIDIA Control Panel" when in English (U.S.) mode, and "NVIDIA 控制面板" when in Chinese (Taiwan) mode.

If they aren't in sync, then I might get "NVIDIA ????" instead. Now, the strange part: say I have the three settings like the following--

Date-Num etc. format: English
Location: Taiwan
System Locale: Chinese (Taiwan)

and the "NVIDIA ????" context menu entry. I can get it back to normal the moment I Change the Date-Num etc. format to Chinese (Taiwan). No reboot is required. If I change it back immediately, the normal (Chinese) context menu entry stays. If I then reboot the system, however, I get the "NVIDIA ????" thing again.

I guess I can live with it now. What I really like, however, is for software (and web sites) to let me choose the UI language instead of trying to be too smart. Though I need East Asian language support, I'm using an English version of Windows exactly because I prefer English UI. If you understand Chinese, you'll know "NVIDIA 控制面板" is an awkward term. It's like babelfish translation--understandable (sometimes) but not pretty. For things I need to see every day, I prefer something prettier.

I'm not a professional coder. I write mostly scripts, especially VBA scripts. I once worked on a computer with Chinese Windows and Chinese Office, and I simply couldn't get any work done with my VBA scripts, for the VBA references were too cryptic to be understandable.  :(

Darwin

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UPDATE: I found the solution to this issue here: http://windowsxp.mvp....org/foreignlang.htm!

Epic... of course, I'm sitting in a library, away from my installation files for PDF Converter Professional 4, which is now borked... Evidently IT is the reason that MFC42LOC.DLL was in my System 32 folder in the first place  :o Renaming MFC42LOC.DLL to MFC42LOC.BAK solved my display problem but has put PDF Converter into a loop trying to reinstall itself. Changing the file name back doesn't help. I'm that fed up of Nuance that I am tempted to simply uninstall it and forget about it.

Darwin

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Stupid, stupid, stupid...  >:( I re-booted and tried to open up Scansoft PDF Converter and clicked through the re-installation nonsense and eventually wound up with a completely functional PDF Converter session! So, I can go home, re-install PDF Converter and live with the Korean dialogs in Paint, ArcGIS and so on, or I can have English dialogs and futz around with a persistent installation prompt everytime I try to run PDF Converter... There has to be a better way! I will find a better way...

Darwin

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I'm Scansoft/Nuance free on this machine... I have Office 2007 installed, so saving to pdf isn't an issue, though I suspect that I will miss the ability to edit downloaded pdfs (saving image based pdfs as searchable pdfs, for example), but I've got a newer computer with PDF Converter Professional 5 installed on it if it comes to that...

mwang and jandi - I wonder if MFC42LOC.DLL is the culprit that has plagued you on and off over the years?