16-Bit program does not proper work

[Guest]

We are still running a 16-Bit program with Access-DataBase. With XP it is
stable - no problems. There is no installation, because all files needed are
in program folder.

I testet it on Vista Ultimate english version. - It ran quite good. - No
problems!

BUT on Vista Business chinese version it does not run stable. Especially in
pop-up menus there are some additional lines with chinese text!

I checked the Vista localization (english) with the Unicode settings.

Is there someone who knows, where this chinese text comes from?

 

[Andrew McLaren]

We are still running a 16-Bit program with Access-DataBase. With XP it is
BUT on Vista Business chinese version it does not run stable. Especially
in
pop-up menus there are some additional lines with chinese text!

If you have an older version of Access, it is based on Single-Byte character
set, not Unicode. Even if it runs on Unicode Windows, Access itself will use
the default non-Uncode code page for many text strings. Only Access 2003 and
later are fully Unicode.

On English Vista, the default non-Unocode page is English. So all data
appears in English. On Chinese Vista, the default non-Unicode codepage is
one of Chinese codepages (Traditional, Simplified, Big5 etc). So, some
Access text may display in Chinese characters, instead of English. This is
probbaly where your Chinese text is coming from.

To fix the problem, you need to configure the default codepage for
non-Unicode programs to be English.

Go to Control Panel, Regional and Language Options.

Click on the Administrative tab.

In the "Language for non-Unicode programs box, press the button "Change
System Locale".

In the System Local drop down box, choose an appropriate English codepage eg
English (Australia), English (Singapore), etc.

You may need to log out and log back in again, for the change to take
effect.

After this change is made, non-Unicode text which doesn't request an
explicit codeopage (ie, which takes the default codepage) will display in
English, rather than Chinese.

Hope it helps,

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your answer.

I did change the language for non-Unicode programs to English, but still the
same problems.

On the other hand I changed the non-Unicode settings on an english Vista to
Chinese and no problems!?

Does someone know, what MUI is for? Its only provided in Ultimate and
Enterprise?

 

[Andrew McLaren]

I did change the language for non-Unicode programs to English, but still
the
same problems.

In that case ... sorry, I don't know. For program APIs which request the
default system locale, changing the language to use for non-Unicode programs
(eg, to English) will determine what language and character set they
display. But, there are many ways in which a program could decide to use a
particular codepage, apart from taking the default system locale. For
example, a program might query the langauage version of the Operating System
it is running on; then use this, as the basis for deciding how to display
text.

Do the Chinese strings actually make any sense, in Chinese? Or are they just
random jumble of characters, which doen't say anything useful?

In any case, I can't think of other user-configurable ways to tackle the
problem. You would need to run the application in a debugger, to find out
exactly how it was determing the language to display, and what APIs it was
using. I can't think of any API changes in Vista that "deliberately" cause
the wrong langauge to be returned. This method is mainly useful if you have
the source code for the program - you wrote it yourselves. If you don't have
the source code, you would need to contact the vendor of the software for
help.

Does someone know, what MUI is for? Its only provided in Ultimate and
Enterprise?

The MUI will change most of the language settings in the system. See here
for complete details:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...9fd8-4963-b06a-5ecc457006c71033.mspx?mfr=true

Yes, MUIs are unfortunately only available for Enterprise and Ultimate
editions of Vista. This was a very misguided decision by Microsoft.

There is no guarantee that an MUI would solve your problem, until you work
out why the program is displaying Chinese text. But if you have a copy of
Vista Ultimate on hand, it would be easy to check.

Good luck with it,