StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The sum of my problem: I'm trying to install a Chinese-language game, but ALL of the hanzi that's not graphics (i.e. the .BMP that acts as the install program's background) comes out as question marks; nonetheless, years of installing stuff has left me able to simply click my way through all of the options, but when I hit Install... (quotation marks are to indicate dialogue boxes)

The install program wrote:"???????? ??
????? '???????' ???????"

"??????
??: -1603 ??????????
??????,??? Windows Installer Help (Msi.chm) ? MSDN?"

Then after that, the "could not install" (I can recognize 'em whenever I see them) screen.

Any idea what gives?

Maybe you can fix it with installing windows support for asian languages (control panel->regional and lanugage options->languages). If that doesnt work youre out of luck unless you have an actual windows version from the region, at least from what I heard (basicly, a lot of specific text stuff is in those versions which isn't available in standard latin/cyrillic script versions and can't be installed on top of them for some reason).

Installing Asian language support should be enough. If not, try setting the default language for programs to Chinese under the regional/language options.

If you mean "Install files for East Asian languages," already done. If you mean input, I have English (US), Chinese (PRC, Simplified, QuanPin) and Japanese (JIS MS-IME2002).

If you mean the Advanced tab, though, do you mean that I have to set the "Language for non-Unicode programs" to Chinese (whichever) just enough to get the install program to actually show the question marks as the hanzi they're supposed to be? (Since that's all I need it for...)

Reason for relevance: I want to play the game, but my attempt to simply unzip the contents of Data1.cab (where everything is contained) to a game folder I created = bust, because the game app froze (ended up taking 92% of CPU power and so on), so I want to install for real.

Seggybop, your suggestion worked, thank you. Setting the "Language for non-Unicode programs" to Chinese (Taiwan) did the trick, it now installs and runs.