Chinese Characters showing up as boxes on Windows 7 Taskbar
 

I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, and I just did a fresh install.

All the Chinese characters are showing up as boxes (folder names, browser tab's on taskbar). Anything in the browsers are fine, but anything outside is showing up as boxes.

I know I can go into settings and change the locale of the system, but that will also screw up some menus and change them to Chinese characters, which I don't want. How can I fix this?

I've also went into fonts and unchecked to display all the fonts, and that worked after one reboot. I turn on my computer this morning to find everything in boxes again.

Haven't used Windows in ages. But did you install the East Asian pack from installation?

Or try here

Language packs - Microsoft Windows

changing the system locale will not change ur menus. changing the menu display languages will, and available w/ w7 ultimate, not professional.

the thing is, when i do a fresh w7 install it read the chinese characters of my files fine, before i change any sort of regional settings. it could have to do w/ some of the encoding that you used previously.

Hehe: Only available with Ultimate/Enterprise versions

ddr: Not necessarily menus, but I had cases where for instance I right click an icon and I would see some items changed to Chinese characters. I tried playing around with the fonts setting, and it would show up, but that was a temporary fix that was gone after a couple of reboots.

The East Asian pack gives you the ability to add Chinese keyboards. It should be available in all versions. The "Ultimate/Enterprise only" thing is for the full windows.

Like many have said here, all you have to do is install the Language Pack to see and type the language, though you do not have the ability to swap out your entire OS to whatever language specified unless Ultimate/Enterprise/Server is chosen.

If you actually click into the link and scroll down to Chinese, it says Learn How, not Download. Click into that and it shows you how to download it for Ultimate/Enterprise, which I don't have.

I've also searched for East Asian pack and couldn't find it.

If anyone could teach me, that'll be great.

there used to be install files for windows 7 x64, but they never worked for me. it wasn't really bothering me though.

have you considered upgrading to windows 8? you do get the language packs for free with pro.

IIRC,

Go to Regional & Language, check one of the tabs where you have a few boxes to check, one of them should say "Install East Asian Language blah blah". Check that, (you need to have your windows DVD ready) and voila.

LIP/MUI's are for ultimate. hence the tool 'vistalizator' that you can google.

Vistalizator - change display language in Windows Vista and Windows 7
Windows MUI Knowledge Center