Using a Japanese Keyboard
with English Windows 95
compiled by the editors Q: I recently bought a new computer here in Japan with Japanese Windows 95 already installed. By following the directions in your "Ensuring Peaceful Coexistence" article (December, page 25), I was able to install English Windows 95 as well, and so now have both Win 95J and Win 95E running smoothly on my system. Thanks.
The problem is that my system has a Japanese 106-key keyboard, which as you know has a layout that does not correspond to the normal English-language keyboard (the opening parenthesis is where the asterisk should be, the asterisk is where the quotation mark should be, the quotation mark is where the @ sign should be, etc.). When I'm using Japanese Windows 95, the symbols that appear onscreen correspond to those shown on the keys I hit; when I'm in English Windows, though, the keyboard driver expects the normal US keyboard layout, and so I have to type an apostrophe (') to get an ampersand (&), an so on. I find this very confusing.
I'd like to use my Japanese keyboard in English Windows 95 and have the key symbols that I press be the ones that actually show up on the screen. I tried copying the Japanese keyboard driver to the English Windows 95 System folder, but I haven't been able to get English Windows 95 to use it. Can you help me?
A: Yes, we can. The procedure for installing your Japanese keyboard for English Windows 95 has a lot of steps, but the procedure is fairly straightforward.
One caution to start. Like our procedure for running both English and Japanese Windows 95 on one computer, this fix is a work-around solution that is not supported by Microsoft -- so if you run into problems, you're on your own. (Microsoft's stance is that if you are using a Japanese keyboard, then you should be running Japanese Windows. Since the installation of both a double-byte character set version and single-byte character set version of Windows 95 is not supported, neither is the mix-and-match of hardware components.)
Please note also that the following procedure involves editing your system registry, which could cause your computer to crash if you make an error. Be sure to read the "Restoring the registry" section of the Registry Editor Help in step 3 below in case you run into trouble. (That said, we've performed this procedure several times and have had no problems.)
Preparing for keyboard installation
Let's assume for this procedure that your Japanese and English versions of Windows 95 are installed in directories called JPWIN95 and USWIN95, respectively. (Substitute your actual directory designations wherever these directory names appear below.)1. Boot your computer in English Windows 95, and copy the Japanese Windows 95 keyboard driver (kbd
jpa01.kbd) from your JPWIN95 System subdirectory to your USWIN95 System subdirectory.
2. Start the regedit.exe program. (Either double-click on it from the USWIN95 directory, or click on the Start button, select Run, type regedit.exe in the Open bar, and click OK.)
3. If you have never worked with the registry editor before (or even if you have), please read through the Registry Editor Help topics, especially the "Restoring the registry" section, before proceeding.
4. In the Registry Editor, double click on the following folders as required (or single click on the "plus" sign in front of each) to go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\control\keyboard layouts folder. (See figure 1.)
Creating the Japanese keyboard registry
Within the keyboard layouts folder, you will see a series of numbered folders. When you click on any of these folders, its layout information appears in the right window. What we're going to do now is create a new folder and definition for a Japanese keyboard.5. Click on the keyboard layouts folder, and from the Edit menu click on New and then Key. A new folder with the default name New Key #1 highlighted will appear at the bottom of the folder list. (See figure 2.)
6. Select this new folder, right click on it, and rename it with a unique number. (If you enter a number lower than anything already on the list, such as 00000012, the new folder will appear at the top of the list the next time you open regedit, making it easy to find. Note also that you must use numbers only; if you try to name this file something like 0001jkey, you'll get an error message at step 19 and will have to return to regedit to give the folder a proper numeric designation.)
7. Select your newly created numbered folder, and from the Edit menu click on New and then String Value. (See figure 3.) New Value #1 will appear highlighted in Name column of the right window.
8. Repeat step 7. This time, New Value #2 will appear in the right window.
9. Rename the New Value #1 selection as "layout file" and the New Value #2 selection as "layout text" (make this all lowercase, with a space between the words; don't type the quotation marks).
10. Double click on the layout file selection. When the Edit String box appears, enter the name of the keyboard driver we copied in step 1
(kbdjpa01.kbd) in the Value data bar. (See figure 4.)
11. Double click on the layout text selection. When the Edit String box appears, type "Japanese" (without the quotation marks) in the Value data bar.
12. Exit the Registry Editor.
Installing the Japanese keyboard
We're now ready to install the Japanese keyboard driver so that English Windows 95 can find and use it.13. From the Start menu, click on Settings and then Control Panel.
14. In the Control Panel window, double click on the Keyboard icon to access the Keyboard Properties window.
15. Click on the Language tab.
You might think the next step would be to click the Add button, but if you do you still won't find Japanese on the list of possibilities. Remember this is a work-around, one not officially supported by Microsoft. So, the next step is:
16. With the English (United States) selection highlighted in the Installed keyboard languages and layouts box, click the Properties button. The Language Properties windows will appear.
17. Click the down arrow at the right of the Keyboard layout bar, and select Japanese (which is the string you entered in step 11) from the list of languages.
18. Click OK to close the Language Properties window.
19. Click the Apply button to install the Japanese keyboard driver. If you followed the above steps correctly, your Japanese keyboard will now be set up in the proper key-layout configuration.
20. Click OK to close the Keyboard Properties window.
And that's it. Now when you hit the "+" symbol on your Japanese keyboard, it will come out as a plus sign in English Windows 95 and not as a colon.
Doing it in DOS
To make sure that your Japanese keyboard always operates properly when you are in DOS as well, use the Windows Notepad or a text editor to make sure that the line in figure 5 is contained in your config.sys and config.dos files.(Remember to substitute the actual name of your Japanese Windows 95 folder for JPWIN95 in figure 5.)
Save the change to the config.sys and config.dos files, and when you restart
your computer, the new DOS device driver will take effect.
Special thanks to Steve Larson of Nihon Libertec Co., Ltd. for his assistance
in developing this Japanese keyboard installation technique.
Bilingual Win95 solutions
In last month's Help Desk, we mentioned that we were testing a multiple-boot utility that would simplify the task of putting both English and Japanese versions of Windows 95 on a single computer. Well, we've actually tried out two shareware batch file methods, dubbed INTLBOOT.BAT and BOOTOS.BAT. Unfortunately, we cannot recommend either method. Both are intended for program developers and could cause some sticky problems for less-experienced users even if used correctly. The manual installation procedure described in our December issue ("Ensuring Peaceful Coexistence," page 25) is, in our opinion, more stable and safer for the typical end user.
We should add one caution regarding our method, however. While it works smoothly as long as you run the appropriate batch file once and then reboot, as instructed, it can overwrite system files with the wrong version if you forget and run the batch file a second time without rebooting. You may want to add some lines to the batch files that will check which language is loaded and abort if the version-switch has already been made. Watch for suggestions on how to do this in next month's Help Desk.
