Installing East Asian character support in Windows XP

Installing support for languages using Chinese characters, required for correctly displaying Chinese, Japanese, and Korean documents in Windows XP, is straightforward.

In addition to five Chinese fonts, Windows XP includes several other Asian-language font sets that simply need to be activated in the operating system.

Activating character font support is also necessary for entering East Asian text using Microsoft’s input methods: «Pinyin keyboard layout for Simplified Chinese» Pinyin IME, «Pinyin keyboard layout for Traditional Chinese» New Phonetic IME, or «Zhuyin (Bopomofo) keyboard layout for Traditional Chinese» MSNP IME.

Китайский сайт в Обозревателе интернета Компании Майкрософт

If Chinese characters still fail to display in some, but not all, programs or websites after following these instructions, you may need to read the instructions on changing the default language for programs and web pages that use encodings other than Unicode.

Some web pages use special fonts that do not require activation or installation in the OS, but generally you will need to activate character fonts to display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean documents correctly.

You can activate character font support either in an already installed WindowsXP or during installation by clicking «Customize», which opens the Regional and Language Options window:

Настройка поддержки языков Восточной Азии на стадии установки

If Windows XP is already installed, follow these steps to open the same settings window. Please note: at this stage, you may need the original Windows XP installation disc. First, open Control Panel:

  • click Start
  • select Control Panel
  • depending on your Control Panel view (Classic or Category), do one of the following:

Category View: select Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options, then choose the task Add other languages.
Classic View: select Regional and Language Options, then open the Languages.

Either way, during or after installing , you have opened Regional and Language Options. Next:

  • select Install files for East Asian languages

     

  • click OK
  • at this step, the Windows XP installation disc may be required
  • restart your computer after installation

That is all!

This article is discussed on the Chinese–Russian Center website’s forum here.