Windows chinese characters boxes

But Windows may give you an error message like this:. 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 follow these instructions on installing AppLocale from the command line.

If you are trying to run Chinese applications created for use only in China, or if some of your Chinese filenames won't display correctly on your system, often your only choice is to change the locale for your entire system. Some software is so tied to China that you will also have to change the location. Those are two different settings. These changes are not permanent, you can reverse them.

If other applications begin behaving strangely you can switch this back to the original setting with no permanent damage Right-click on the Windows 10 Start menu button, and then click on "Control Panel". You can also get here via the news Settings icon but this is fastest. Click the "Administrative" tab. Then, under "Language for non-Unicode Programs, click "Change system locale In XP, do not mess around with the "Code page conversion tables" you'll find in that panel.

Then click "OK" as needed to get back out of the control panel, and restart your system. After restarting your system, try running the Chinese application. If some or all of the Chinese is still not displaying correctly, the next setting to experiement with is in the "Location" tab of the same control panel. Don't do this unless you must, because many of your other applications and services may start showing you China defaults in places you may not expect. As I said, these changes are not permanent, so if you encounter unexpected settings or annoying instability in other applications - like Chinese characters showing up where they don't belong - you can always switch back.

I recommend changing these back to your home locale and location each time you install new software unless you don't mind if it installs 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.

Did both of the above ideas fail to fix your problem in Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 10? It's possible that your application was developed for Windows XP or earlier versions, and still looks for two Registry key values that no longer change automatically when you switch locales. If so, you will have to edit your Registry to change or add a key required by your app, as follows:.

Many thanks to Jody Leung for figuring this one out! Warnings: The following suggestions are primarily for applications created in and intended for a Chinese locale, i. If your problem is only with filenames, skip the emulator section and see the section on changing the system locale.

QuickBooks won't be helped by locale emulators. Skip to the second option here on changing the system locale. Outlook can behave strangely if you also try to use it for English messages. See my article on how Outlook behaves when you change the system locale. Chinese applications developed for Windows XP or earlier may require you to make changes to a couple of Registry key values yourself. If the Simplified Chinese version of Windows 10 is installed, then it will already have this optional font feature pre-installed.

If a different language version of Windows 10 is installed but a user enables a Simplified Chinese input method, or if they have a profile associated with their Microsoft account that already includes Simplified Chinese and that profile roams onto the device, then the Simplified Chinese Supplemental Fonts feature will automatically be installed via Windows Update.

By installing optional font packages to match the set of languages actively used on a system, we are able to achieve the best balance between the number of font choices provided and the disk footprint used.

But even without any of these optional font features installed, every Windows 10 desktop system still includes the common UWP fonts, ensuring that Windows still has great support for Unicode and for international text, and ensuring that universal Windows apps can have great text display on desktop devices and every other form factor.

In order to define the converged, UWP font set using a limited number of fonts, some fonts that were present in Windows Phone 8. As mentioned above, a number of fonts that previously would have been included in every Windows desktop client system have in Windows 10 been moved into optional font features. The following table gives the complete list of the optional font features and representative language associations.

Select fonts that have been moved into these packages are listed; these are fonts that were used as shell user interface fonts in previous Windows versions but have since been superseded by newer Windows fonts. If you experience these symptoms in some apps on Windows 10 desktop, then you can provide feedback to the app developer suggesting that they update their app for Windows In the meantime, you can also install one or more optional font features that the apps may require to function correctly.

The steps to do this are as follows: If you know the language of the text that is displaying incorrectly and often use that language: If you know the language involved, then you can add that language into your user profile, and any associated optional font feature will be automatically installed.

Note: other language-related optional features, such as text prediction or spell checking, may also be installed. If you experience the symptoms described in some Windows Phone apps, then you may want to contact the app developer suggesting that they update their app using the guidance provided here. Note: Windows 10 Mobile does not support any optional font features. If you are configuring language packs or international settings in Windows 10 deployment images, then you should use the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool DISM to include optional font packages and other optional, language-related capabilities associated with the language packs that you add into your images.

The following article provides details regarding the optional font capabilities and the associated Windows 10 language pack languages:. Features On Demand. See also this article for an overview on Windows 10 language packs and all optional, language-related capabilities:. Add languages to Windows images. If you are a system administrator and know that your scenarios will require fonts from one or more of these optional font capabilities, even if you are not including associated language packs into your deployment images, you can still add any of the font capabilities into your deployment images using DISM.

Your app may be impacted by changes to fonts in Windows 10 if you have a Windows Phone app that has a dependency on one of the fonts that has been excluded from Windows 10 Mobile, or if you have a Windows desktop app that has a dependency on one of the fonts that has been migrated into optional font packages, and if your app does not make use of font fallback mechanisms provided by Windows.

Types of apps and app scenarios most likely to be impacted include:. Browsers or other apps that do complex layout using lower-level graphics APIs that do not provide font fallback e. If your app manifests the symptoms described, particularly in the above scenarios, then you should review the fonts upon which your app relies.

Please see the following article for fonts recommended for use by apps on Windows Thanks for your feedback. I am having this issue and I have tried nearly everything. On my windows 10 computer, the language is set to Chinese and everything displays fine but in certain programs it displayed as boxes. Not even gibberish.

Just boxes. I've tried turning off the "Hide not supported languages" in Fonts. Also leaving the region and locale as china still doesn't work. This is weird because everything like Microsoft edge shows the characters fine. It's just some programs that has problems but not only that but they appear to be displaying fine, but when I right click something the menu is boxes or when I go into the settings for that program.

It seems as though the boxes are only appearing deep inside the programs. This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread.