Vista - Character problems in Vista Home Basic 32bit

Hi there,

I live in Japan, and I bought my laptop here. Thanks to this, I have a Japanese version of Windows Vista, which didn't really bother me so far, but now it has caused me a serious problem.

I have a Fujitsu laptop, with an Intel Mobile 945GM Express Chipset. I would love to change some of my settings, due to recent software-crashes, for example the anisotrpoic filter.

I open the interface of the driver, but on the buttons, and in the lists, I only see question marks. This happened many times before as well, but only at applications were I knew what to select anyways.

I believe it will be a problem later on as well, so I would like to know why it is like this, and how I could get rid of this error.

Even my friends who have Japanese Vista installed on their laptops, have no such problems with any sort of softwares... So I wonder what could be wrong.

I appreciate any help I could get, thanks in advance!

> Hi there,Try first install latest graphic drivers form intel.com it might fix your
problems (select your language version if you can).
You can also check if Aero is causing this problem by turning it off change
theme to windows classic (Display Properties).

Question marks replacing UI strings typically indicates a Unicode ->
ANSI transform failure. Is all of the software and drivers in either
English or Japanese? Or is some of the software also in a third
language?

Seeing as how this is a Japanese laptop with Japanese Windows
Vista, I'm guessing that the system locale (default ANSI code page)
is set to Japanese (Japan). This should be fine for any ANSI-based
component that contains UI strings in either English or
Japanese. But if the system code page has been changed to something
other than Japanese, and is an ANSI-based component with UI
in a third language, the strings will not display properly.

You can confirm the current system code page (aka 'Language
for non-Unicode programs') by launching 'Regional and Language
Options' from Control Panel. This setting can be checked on the
Administrative tab.

Best of luck,
Garrett McGowan [MSFT]

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