Win XP (English version) and Chinese Input - hangs aplication

[been2china]

Hi

I have an issue on my laptop. Using the standard Windows XP support for East Asian Languages to type Chinese via Pinyin Input, it always worked fine then suddenly, using the usual Alt-Shift to change to Simplified Chinese Input, I can only enter the 1st. 2 characters then it locks/hangs and Task Manager shows that prog is using 98% or 99% CPU.

This happens with Word, Explorer and Windows Live Messenger, in fact any attempt to input Chinese.

So far I have tried removing the East Asian Languages option then adding it back again, no change.

Very reluctant to do a complete Windows reinstall/repair without first getting to understand what went wrong. Anyone else encountered this - any suggestions?

(There is no Event Log error when the app hangs, - once I kill the app via Task Manager a hungapp error on the app exe file name can be seen)

Thanks!

[889]

You say you removed the East Asian languages option, but what did you do: just uncheck that box?

If so, I'd suggest going to the details page and separately uninstalling whatever Chinese and other Asian language options you've got, then reboot and try installing them again.

If it's a particular problem with the MS IME, you can also try installing the Google Pinyin IME:

http://tools.google.com/pinyin

It's a bit better than the MS IME in any event.

[been2china]

Now I have tried removing the keyboard for Chinese input from the Details section as well us un-installing all East Asian language, reboot, then a re-install of all Chinese setup. But to no avail, still hangs the app after 2 characters of input.

Will look at the Google IME but will it work for all things in Windows, eg with Windows IME you can create file names in Chinese, etc, use it in Live Messenger, Outlook Express and Word. Can Google IME do all that?

[tooironic]

Yes, of course. Google Pinyin is quite fantastic, 100x better than Window's terrible default one. It's fast, reliable and has an excellent pinyin=>character prediction scheme.