Symptoms: Web pages with Chinese characters fail to display properly using Internet Explorer 6.X. Pages will either display total "gibberish" (Fig. 1) or will show the general format of the page with graphics and Roman characters, but two-byte Chinese characters are not displayed properly (Fig. 2). Usually having "Auto-Select" checked [IE6: View -> Encoding] will result in a display as shown in Fig. 1.

Other programs using Chinese characters (Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat, etc.) all seem to be fine. Web pages with other non-Roman fonts (e.g. Arabic, Cyrillic) also seem to be displayed correctly. Lastly, and quite perplexing, other browsers (e.g. Firefox, Mozilla) seem to display Chinese characters perfectly.

Since only Internet Explorer is affected, the most logical place to change settings would seemingly be IE6: Tools -> Internet Options -> Languages. However checking, installing, uninstalling, or reordering any of the options in IE6 fail to correct this behavior. Believe me, I've tried nearly every combination, as well as installing and reinstalling any number of Chinese fonts.

Solution 1 (only partially effective): Use Firefox, or other software, for browsing. Not very elegant, but useful for your web-browsing needs. Unfortunately, compiled html files (.chm) - used frequently for help and e-books - all use Internet Explorer for display, so these files will not display properly.

Solution 2 (totally effective): From Control Panel in the operating system, uninstall then re-install the Chinese or East Asian language capabilities of Windows. Simple, but who would think of going there, particularly since other software display East-Asian characters correctly. Windows XP: Go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages. Under "Supplemental language support", uncheck the box Install files for East Asian languages. After exiting this dialogue box, reboot. After rebooting return to Language Options and recheck the box for "Install files for East Asian languages". After exiting this dialogue box, reboot.
Windows 2000: Go to Control Panel -> Regional Options -> General. Under "Language settings for the system", uncheck the boxes for Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. After exiting this dialogue box, reboot. After rebooting return to "Language settings for the system" and recheck the boxes for Simplified and Traditional Chinese, then reboot.