File metadata displayed as question marks using Cyrillic language.

Hi everyone,

Big windows 7 fan, and to be honest, have had this issue since DAY 1, when i first got my PC in 2011. For some strange reason I have decided to see if this is something I can fix.

I tag audio files (wav) with cyrillic metadata, because the songs are russian, etc. And I know that windows 7 has extensive support for metadata, displaying it in file explorer, sorting by it, etc.

But cyrillic language metadata has always displayed as question marks, the actual file names are fine, the problem is just with the metadata. I use foobar to tag and read the metadata, so I know it's not being written wrongly. It's just that it is not displayed correctly, but as "????????", commas, apostrophes, and numbers are displayed correctly, just not cyrillic characters. This is in file explorer. I am not concerned by windows media player at this time, although in WMP, all metadata AND names are displayed in a corrupted manner.

I am pretty sure this is due to character sets, as i've had this with text files not wanting to save cyrillic characters until I change the character set.

I can upload a screenshot if anybody asks me to.

Hello bfh47,
welcome to the Forum.

How are you inputting/modifying the Cyrillic characters of the file? Are you doing this through windows explorer or through 3rd party software?

There are different Cyrillic character sets (Russian, Serbian, Bosnian, etc).

Have you input additional language pack(s) for windows to display?

Hi iko, thanks for taking an interest in this problem!

I am using only Russian and Ukrainian language for inputting the meta-data. Now that you mention it, I am tagging all of the meta data using a program called "foobar3000", this is a very big open source audio software. This COULD be my single point of failure, I will explore this possibility.

I don't know why I would have to input additional language packs... for example, I have the russian keyboard option (I switch between english and russian), and russian characters are displayed fine everywhere else, (file names, for example). So surely it's already installed on my machine?

And the funny thing is... I have some mp3 files that were tagged by someone else on a different machine. On my machine, the metadata displayed in file explorer is a displayed correctly.

This is proof that some form of cyrillic russian is acceptable for the file explorer to display, as I have files that prove this. I just don't understand why only some, and not other cyrillic text is displayed.

Is there anything I can do on my machine to make sure file explorer displays ALL Cyrillic meta-data appropriately? Any potential fixes would be appreciated, and as I said last time, if you'd like pictures, i can provide.

Instead of foobar try TagScanner if you have the time and patience.

No, you do not need additional language packs after all. As you say they have been installed already.