Windows 98 Cyrillic Setup

Since you'll be rebooting your computer during this procedure, it is recommended that you print a hard copy of this page prior to proceeding and work from there to avoid getting lost. These instructions assume you're using either Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you're using a different web browser, you'll have to improvise on the file-download steps.

1. Click the START button in the lower left-hand corner of the Windows screen. When the Start Menu pops up, click "Settings", then click "Control Panel". The Control Panel window will then appear on-screen as shown below (you may see a list with small icons instead, depending on your settings, but that doesn't change the procedure):

   

2. Run the "Add/Remove Programs" icon on the control panel. The "Add/Remove Programs Properties" window will appear. Click the "Windows Setup" tab, and the window should generally appear as below.

   

3. Scroll down the list and check "Multilanguage Support" as shown above on the options list, then click "OK" at the bottom of the "Add/Remove Programs Properties" window.
4. You will then be prompted to insert the Windows 98 installation CD-ROM; do so. Windows will copy files from the CD to your hard disk.
5. Next, Windows will prompt you to restart the computer; click "Restart".
6. After your computer has restarted, you should still see the Control Panel window on-screen. If not, re-run Control Panel per the instructions in step 1 above and continue with step 7.
7. Run the "Keyboard" icon, and the "Keyboard Properties" window will appear.
8. Click the "Language" tab, then click the "Add" button. A small "Add Language" window will appear with a pull-down list of languages.
9. Scroll downward, select Russian, then click "OK". You may be prompted to insert the Windows 98 installation CD-ROM; if so, follow the instructions presented. If you're not returned to the Keyboard Properties window, rerun it again from within Control Panel and reselect the "Language" tab.
10. In the "Switch Languages" box within the Keyboard Properties window, check the "hot-key" combination you wish to use to switch between the Cyrillic and Roman character sets while typing (Ctrl+Shift is the easiest to use, in the author's opinion).
11. At the bottom of the Keyboard Properties window, check the "Enable indicator on taskbar" box.
12. The Keyboard Properties window should now appear as shown below; click "OK" at the bottom of the window.

    

13. You should now see a small blue icon in the system tray (lower right corner of the screen, next to the time, typically) which says either En or Ru. To switch between the two, click on the icon and select the language, or press the hot-key combination (Ctrl-Shift or whichever you chose in step 10).
14. Installation of the "stock" Windows Cyrillic is complete. However, Microsoft elected not to give its users a choice of which Russian Cyrillic keyboard to use. The only keyboard layout provided by Microsoft is the one shown immediately below:

    

    This is the keyboard on which "real Russians" learn to type, the so-called GOST standard, as officially defined during the Soviet era. If you wish to use this keyboard, your installation is complete and you may skip to step 24 below.

15. The GOST keyboard is often difficult to learn for users already accustomed to typing on the American keyboard. In order to alleviate this problem, the so-called "homophonic", "YaWERTY" (or sometimes "YaShERTY") keyboard layout was developed, on which Cyrillic characters are matched as closely as possible by sound to the locations of their Roman counterparts on the American QWERTY keyboard. This keyboard layout is shown immediately below:

    

    Note: The following steps describe how to install the homophonic keyboard. These procedures reportedly do NOT work for Windows 2000 for reasons not yet determined.

16. This step is for Internet Explorer users only. Click here to begin installation of the homophonic keyboard layout. A "File Download" window will appear. In this window, select "Run this program from its current location" then click the OK button. A "Security Warning" window may then pop up; click "Yes" within this window. A "WinZip Self-Extractor" window will then appear. In the "Unzip to folder:" textbox, change the path to your Windows System folder; this is usually "C:\windows\system" (without the quotes); if Windows is installed somewhere other than C:\windows, change the path as applicable to your Windows System folder. Then click the "Unzip" button, and overwrite the existing files if prompted to do so.
17. This step is for Netscape users only. Click here to begin installation of the homophonic keyboard layout. A "Save As..." dialog window will appear. In this window, browse to the c:\temp folder and click the "Save" button. From the Start Menu, run Windows Explorer, browse to the c:\temp folder, and from there run the "kbdruy" program. A "WinZip Self-Extractor" window will then appear. In the "Unzip to folder:" textbox, change the path to your Windows System folder; this is usually "C:\windows\system" (without the quotes); if Windows is installed somewhere other than C:\windows, change the path as applicable to your Windows System folder. Then click the "Unzip" button, and overwrite the existing files if prompted to do so.
18. From the Start Menu, run Windows Explorer again and browse to the Windows System folder. In the list of files, find Yawerty.reg and run it. A "Registry Editor" prompt will appear and ask "Are you sure you want to add the information in...?" Click the yes button and another prompt should appear stating "Information in ... has been successfully entered into the registry." Click OK.
19. Open the Control Panel again per the instructions in step 1.
20. Run the "Keyboard" icon, and the "Keyboard Properties" window will appear once again.
21. In the "Keyboard Properties" window, select the Language tab, and then select Russian from the list of languages, as shown in the figure below:

    

22. In the "Keyboard Properties" window click the "Properties" button. A "Language Properties" window will appear. Scroll down the "Keyboard layout" list and select Russian Homophonic as in the figure below. Then click "OK" in the "Language Properties" window, then "OK" again in the "Keyboard Properties" window.

    

23. If you later wish to reinstall the GOST keyboard layout, you may repeat steps 19 through 22, but select "Russian" from the list instead of Russian Homophonic.
24. Installation of the Russian fonts and keyboards is now complete. To switch between Russian and English, press the hot-key combination that you selected in step 10 (e.g. Ctrl-Shift). You should see the language icon in the system tray change between En and Ru. This switch is made independently for each application running, so you'll have to select the language you wish to use within each program you're using at any given time. For some programs, such as Microsoft Office, the hot-key switches both the keyboard and font simultaneously; for others only the keyboard switches but not the font.
25. To print a copy of either keyboard layout above, click on the figure and a printable version will appear on the screen.

Note: There is a somewhat different version of the homophonic keyboard available which I call the YaVERTY variant. Click here for installation instructions.

With the above steps complete, you now have the necessary keyboard layouts and fonts at your disposal to produce Russian-language documents with little more effort than that required for the English language.