Pinyin (simplified PRC) IME stops operating in most applications

... after a short period of usage. I have Vista Business, always up-to-date.

The symptoms appear in all chatroom and instant messenger applications
(Yahoo, MSN, AsiaFriendfinder and others), but Word2003 continues to process
properly. I think it happens after some combination of upper and lower case
characters, seems as though the IME retains some incorrect state. When I
toggle in and out of English, Japanese, Chinese that fails to fix it. If I
type some pinyin in Word2003 that has fixed it on one occasio, but only the
once.

The Japanese IME may continue to function or may not, it is unpredictable.

In Yahoo Messenger when this happens characters are echoed in a different
font.
The Language bar correctly displays CH or JP as the selected language.

Can anyone suggest a fix or a workaround at the time? Apart from typing in
word and copy-pasting into the chatroom? Thank you in anticipation...


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�鬼 LaoGui