I am in no way expert enough to thoroughly discuss the Russian phonetic keyboard versus the Russian keyboard that ships with Microsoft Windows by default, but working on a campus with international students and faculty I come across this stuff. Mostly, I apply a fix that I know about and I ask the user to test it out since I can’t tell the difference. This Russian phonetic keyboard fix that I found was previously hosted on a CompuServe site that has since closed up shop. I’m republishing this information so that it will still be available to others.
(Photo from Flickr)
In order to change the default Russian keyboard to the phonetic one follow these steps.
- Download this file from my server: russian_keyboard.zip
- Extract the files. There will be two folders. Temporarily extract (or copy) them to your desktop.
- Open the folder marked Phonetic.
- Copy the KBD1251Y.DLL file to your c:WindowsSystem32 directory (or C:winntsystem32 if you’re using Windows 2000)
- Double-click on the KBD1251Y.REG file to change the registry information for that keyboard to point to the new DLL file you just copied over.
That’s it. You may need to restart the computer, but now when you select the Russian keyboard it will be using the new DLL file and the Phonetic keyboard.
If you find you need to restore the keyboard to the default Windows Russian keyboard, go into the Restore Original folder you extracted and double click on the std_nt.REG file to update the Registry info to point to the previous DLL.