Installing Urdu On Windows XP

There are two aspects on Installing Urdu Support on Windows XP:

1. Enabling Web Browsers to Render Urdu Pages Correctly
2. Setting Up the Computer to Write in Urdu Script

We'll try to cover both aspects in this guide.

Enabling Web Browsers to Render Urdu Pages Correctly

In order so that you browsers be able to render Urdu text correctly, you need to have Urdu fonts installed on your system. A quick way to install all essential fonts required by most of Urdu websites, is to download and install the following file:

• Essential Urdu Fonts∞

After installing these fonts, you should be able to read Urdu correctly in major Windows-based web-browsers including Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, etc. If after installing fonts, and restarting your web-browser, you still dont see urdu text properly, then you need to enable UTF-8 encoding in your browser. Please follow these directions:

• For Internet Explorer, go to View->Encoding->Unicode (UTF-8).
• For Mozilla Firefox, go to View->Character Encoding->Unicode (UTF-8).

Above steps should enable you to read Urdu properly. Now we proceed to the second-part which would allow us to even write Urdu script on our PCs.

Setting Up the Computer to Write in Urdu Script

You will need Windows XP CD in this process.

1. Go to Control Panel and open "Regional and Language"
2. Select "Language" tab.
3. Select the option "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai)"
4. Click Apply.

Installation would complete in a few moments.

1. Click "Detail"
2. Click "Add" and select "Urdu" from "Input Language"
3. Press "OK".

This completes the Urdu installation on your PC. Now you should be able to see a box on your task bar wherefrom you can choose the input language. Now you can write Urdu anywhere in Windows.