My Uk Desktop Is Turning Thai On Me!

[Steve2UK]

Really puzzled by this...........

My desktop PC in London (running XP-Pro SP2) has started having problems displaying the £ sign in Outlook e-mails - it displays a Thai-looking character instead (sort of lower case "u" with a tail going out from top left of the character).

No problem typing the £ sign in Word, WordPerfect, Notepad, Outlook and on here. I've had the Kedmanee Thai language extension installed for a while before without seeing this happen; just removed it and I still get the same result in received Outlook e-mails (from UK senders not Thai). I now have no language extensions installed - just the standard (for me) UK English keyboard.

Any thoughts?

Seriously weirder than that is this........... I just did a Java Runtime update - and the control panel showed the year date for the previous update as 2548 i.e. the Buddhist calendar ! I haven't touched the date/time/location settings - still London GMT as always.

For what it's worth, I did have my laptop in Thailand for 6 weeks recently and set the time/location on it for Thailand. But I don't have the laptop networked with my desktop here, let alone synchronise them; all I've done since I got back was copy across my expanded Favorites folder and Outlook contents. Is that enough to generate this result - even on UK e-mails received on my desktop since I got back?

[Richard W]

Perhaps PCs get bored with English!

Have you checked your preferences in the globalisation section? It sounds as though you might have a 'Thai locale' - I believe that is independent of your keyboard and input language settings, but some people recommend changing it as part of the process of installing an additional input language/keyboard. (Your £ sign is the letter kho khuat (ฃ).)

The immediate cure for this misdisplay is to switch the encoding, as you've probably already figured out.

I run Windows XP Home Edition. Although my preferences are set to English - default input language & method is UK English with US International keyboard layout, I do have some Thai features I would not expect. The most striking is that Notepad thinks that 'ANSI' means TIS-620 (or more likely Windows-874) rather than Latin-1, which is the extension one would expect. Internet Explorer often guesses that the encoding of pages is Thai rather than Western European.

In my case, this might be because I have the Thai edition of Microsoft Office installed. The only other reason I can think of is that Thai is one of my optional input methods, and was the first optional input method I installed. It may be the longest standing input method - I no longer have UK English with UK keyboard as an option, as my UK keyboard is now gathering dust.

I also have a Khmer input method installed (tagged as Catalan). Sometimes the input method/keyboard switches to Khmer for no apparent reason. It happens when I switch windows.

[Steve2UK]

Perhaps PCs get bored with English!

Have you checked your preferences in the globalisation section?  It sounds as though you might have a 'Thai locale' - I believe that is independent of your keyboard and input language settings, but some people recommend changing it as part of the process of installing an additional input language/keyboard.  (Your £ sign is the letter kho khuat (ฃ).)

The immediate cure for this misdisplay is to switch the encoding, as you've probably already figured out.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks, Richard - spot on with the Thai character that I'm seeing. Sad to say, I haven't got beyond thinking that it's probably something to do with encoding - and I can't find any reference to the "globalisation section" you mentioned - not within Control Panel or Outlook that I can see. I do see that I've got two mentions of "Thai (Windows)" in my IE6 encoding drop-down - "Auto-Select" is enabled and "Western European (ISO)" is bulleted. As I say, this only seems to happen in Outlook text; in Outlook, under International Options, I also have "Western European (ISO)" selected.

After that I'm stuck. No big deal really - seems that I can type the £ sign when I need to. But still puzzled.........

The updated Java console is now showing the western (2005) year. Kind of sad about that - I rather liked the idea that my PC was becoming Buddhist.........

BTW, I forgot to mention earlier that I do have "Thai Interactive", Paiboon "Thai for Beginners" and the "Spoken Thai" dictionary installed from a couple of months ago (as you can guess, I haven't got very far with them yet). I didn't spot this issue then - but maybe I just missed it? I could un-install them and do a clean-up followed by a re-install.

[Richard W]

Perhaps PCs get bored with English!

Have you checked your preferences in the globalisation section?  It sounds as though you might have a 'Thai locale' - I believe that is independent of your keyboard and input language settings, but some people recommend changing it as part of the process of installing an additional input language/keyboard.  (Your £ sign is the letter kho khuat (ฃ).)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I can't find any reference to the "globalisation section" you mentioned.

Possibly because I used the wrong term! It's in the 'Regional Options' under 'Regional and Language Options'.

BTW, I forgot to mention earlier that I do have "Thai Interactive", Paiboon "Thai for Beginners" and the "Spoken Thai" dictionary installed from a couple of months ago (as you can guess, I haven't got very far with them yet). I didn't spot this issue then - but maybe I just missed it? I could un-install them and do a clean-up followed by a re-install.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I would have thought they're a long shot. It's probably something lurking in your registry, but I'm no Windows expert.

[Richard W]

Although my preferences are set to English - default input language & method is UK English with US International keyboard layout, I do have some Thai features I would not expect.  The most striking is that Notepad thinks that 'ANSI' means TIS-620 (or more likely Windows-874) rather than Latin-1, which is the extension one would expect. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've just discovered the reason for this - in the Regional and Language Options, Advanced tab (only accessible from an administrator account), I'd set the 'language for non-Unicode programs' to Thai. And I thought Notepad was a Unicode program!

[Steve2UK]

Although my preferences are set to English - default input language & method is UK English with US International keyboard layout, I do have some Thai features I would not expect.  The most striking is that Notepad thinks that 'ANSI' means TIS-620 (or more likely Windows-874) rather than Latin-1, which is the extension one would expect. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've just discovered the reason for this - in the Regional and Language Options, Advanced tab (only accessible from an administrator account), I'd set the 'language for non-Unicode programs' to Thai. And I thought Notepad was a Unicode program!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Richard - thanks for the further info. Just followed in your footsteps and I've now got my "£" signs back