Characters Look like Wingdings?

[kdavid]

I recently got a new computer. I'm using Windows XP.

I'm not sure if Windows is the Chinese version with English turned on, or English with updated language packs.

Pretty much everything looks fine. I have no problems typing Chinese in Microsoft Office (e.g. Word or Excel), Chinese input is fine, characters look fine in Firefox and reading websites has no problems.

However, my wife has some Jukebox program she runs which randomly plays music. Whenever we open that, anything that should be a Chinese character instead just looks like Wingdings.

Also, just this morning I discovered that when I copy and paste characters from another program, such as Excel, into Notepad 2, Notepad two recognizes the characters as questions marks (i.e. ???).

The latter example is the most frustrating for me as I need to use Notepad 2 to transfer ZDT files to Anki.

My old computer didn't have these issues with the music program or with Notepad, so I'm pretty sure there's a Windows issue. Any ideas on what the culprit would be?

[feihong]

It sounds like you are using the English version of Windows XP with East Asian languages support turned on.

There is a setting for Windows XP that lets you change the language for user interfaces. You can find this setting under Control Panel > Regional and Language Settings > Advanced > Language for non-Unicode programs. If it is set to English, change it to Chinese (PRC) if you using simplified characters or one of the other Chinese options if you are using traditional characters.

Regarding your Notepad 2 problem, I'm guessing you need to set your default encoding in Notepad 2 to UTF-8. I don't use Notepad 2, so I couldn't tell you how to go about doing that.

[kdavid]

Excellent. That fixed both of the problems. Thanks very much!