Chinese character input - language bar woes

[Ravening_Wolf]

Our school has recently started running after school chinese lessons in one of our computer suites. However I now have the following headaches:

1. Is there a way to install the Asian language pack on multiple machines remotely?
2. Having disabled the Language Bar via GPO in the past, I cannot get it back, thus students cannot change their input language.

I have scoured the net for answers to the above and am turning up blanks. It seems to be a fairly common problem that once turned off, the Language Bar cannot be re-activated. There is a TechNet article somewhere on the Microsoft site, but the details conatined therein do not work/apply.

I have also enabled access to the Regional Setting applet within the Control Panel for student users but still they are unable to make the necessary changes. And then to make matters even more complicated, students share a mandatory, read-only profile.

Can anyone advise anything on the above? Thanks in advance.

[Geoff]

This wont work properly. You'll need to install the Chinese edition of Windows for 'proper' support. Additionally, you'll need the Chinese edition of Office too (unless you want to go down the OO.org route). I suggest you dual boot.

[Ravening_Wolf]

I knew this was going to be a nightmare - unfortunately it would appear that my imagination wasn't quite up to the level of horror required though....

The guy from our LEA mentioned something called "Pin-Ying" (spelling?) which might allow chinese input with a UK keyboard - has anyone ever heard of that?

[zag]

I had exactly the same problem, there doesn't seem to be a Chinese language pack for Microsoft office 2003, and there is no way to input their chars either.

I am also looking for a 3rd party piece of software like frkeys that inputs the special language keys for mandarin.

[strawberry]

i'm not sure how the language works, but i installed the pack for a chinese teacher here and she seems to be able to type and use chinese websites perfectly.

how to do it on many machines, i'd guess its an installation option!.