I bought a new computer, and it has Chinese Windows. How can I convert it to English Windows? I thought is would be easy, but every time I put the English Verison Windows disk in it fails during setup. Is there somewhere I can take it to convet it?
Thanks!
DFC
What version of windows ?
What do you mean by ‘fail’ ? Is there an error message ?
Windows XP. The error message just says installation failed. Should it be as easy as just inserting the English Windows disk, and hitting install?
I don’t think you can convert it. Have you got a full retail install disk for XP or just a recovery disk ?
I’d advise you to FDISK the hard drive and boot up from a bootable XP install disk.
You should be able to install over a previous installation, but maybe that only works if it’s the same version and language.
You can also delete the windows directory and reinstall without reformatting. That you can keep your data. But programs will probably have to be reinstalled because all your settings will be lost.
Have you tried to change the “locale” settings? I have English Windows XP at work, but by changing the locale settings to “Taiwan”, I actually get some system displays changed to English (time, date… etc).
Changing the locale won’t turn it into English windows. If it did, there wouldn’t be seperate Chinese and English versions.
DUH! What I meant was, if he only wishes to have everyday stuff like date and time displayed in English, all he has to do is changing the locale and language. For things like system messages, a different OS will be necessary.
Bongo, my personal advice is to back up that Chinese Windows before proceeding any further. Throwing away an operating system is something you may regret in the future. Sure, Windows is quirky enough even in your native tongue, but there may be times you want to do something in Chinese, like run a translation program. Also, the Chinese Windows probably came with a lot of drivers that you might have difficulty replicating in a raw installation of English Windows.
If you are not too space-constrained, consider just adding a new bootable partition with Partition Magic; then you can take your choice between English and Chinese Windows each time you boot up. Furthermore, when you can’t read the help messages in Chinese you can take a peek over on the English side. (Of course they are at best intentionally evasive and tend to skirt around the REAL problems, but that’s Microsoft, not a language issue.)
Now I have a related question for anyone who is still reading: I could avoid a good many reboots if it were only possible to use “Dr. Eye” from within English Windows. The 1998 version installs all right, (subsequent versions do not) but even after installing some Chinese fonts along with it, it will not access them and the Chinese appears as gibberish. This even though Office and browsers and other software have no trouble displaying Chinese. If one could get Dr. Eye up and running, then there’d be a Chinese dictionary and (has anyone noticed?) a pretty darn good character entry method (type in the English, and copy out the Chinese) available within English Windows. The need to boot back and forth between the two OS’s would be greatly reduced.
I think that’s remotely on thread, isn’t it? Why start a new thread when an old one will do.
pjm