Chinese message box all of a sudden

Hi

What could be the reason that certain programs (which are accessing shell
columns programatically) all of a sudden display mixed English/Chinese
message boxes? I checked the language settings of my system (Vista Home
Premium, 32 bit, all updates applied), but there's nothing wrong. The
language for non-Unicode programs is set to English (United States) and all
other language settings are also set to English.

Notepad started to display this odd behaviour, too. When I open certain
files like *.dat files , the content is sometimes also shown in Chinese
characters.

Thx
Uwe

uwe wrote:

> Hi
>
> What could be the reason that certain programs (which are accessing shell
> columns programatically) all of a sudden display mixed English/Chinese
> message boxes? I checked the language settings of my system (Vista Home
> Premium, 32 bit, all updates applied), but there's nothing wrong. The
> language for non-Unicode programs is set to English (United States) and
> all other language settings are also set to English.
>
> Notepad started to display this odd behaviour, too. When I open certain
> files like *.dat files , the content is sometimes also shown in Chinese
> characters.

Lets try and narrow down the troubleshooting path:

The First Question Of Troubleshooting: what changed between the time things
worked and the time they didn't?

The Second Question of Windows Troubleshooting: what is the malware/virus
status of the machine? If you think it is clean, what programs (and
versions) did you use to determine this?

Be sure the computer is clean:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...moving_Malware

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

> what changed between the time things worked and the time they didn't?

Compiling a program. After the compile the Chinese characters appeared in
the message box. I checked: there were no changes whatsoever to any of the
source files of the application. Of course I did a fresh build, but to no
avail. The program only reads shell information, BTW, it does not manipulate
the shell.

Notepad displayed Chinese characters before the above mentioned compile
happened - although only on a random basis. Cannot tell when that odd
behaviour started.


> what is the malware/virus status of the machine?

Clean. Just finished a scan of the whole system with Kaspersky this morning.

Uwe

uwe wrote:

>> what changed between the time things worked and the time they didn't?
>
> Compiling a program. After the compile the Chinese characters appeared in
> the message box. I checked: there were no changes whatsoever to any of the
> source files of the application. Of course I did a fresh build, but to no
> avail. The program only reads shell information, BTW, it does not
> manipulate the shell.
>
> Notepad displayed Chinese characters before the above mentioned compile
> happened - although only on a random basis. Cannot tell when that odd
> behaviour started.
>
>
>> what is the malware/virus status of the machine?
>
> Clean. Just finished a scan of the whole system with Kaspersky this
> morning.

Wow, that's really odd. I'm afraid I have no idea. You might want to try a
System Restore to when things worked. Otherwise, let's hope that someone
who also compiles programs under Vista has an answer for you.

Sorry that I was unable to help.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

> Sorry that I was unable to help.

No worries. Thanks a lot for your time.

Uwe