Mulltiple Language Bars Bug in WinXP

Hi people, I'm new to this forum and I thought I'd give my food for thought here:

This happens both on both versions of Windows I've used (Home and Pro) with SP2. The XP Pro is English and the XP Home is Greek.

Problem Description
I have two laguages installed in my PC, English and Greek, with English defined as default. I also have quite a lot of shortcuts copied in the Quick Launch toolbar because I find it easy to use. Some times (and this is totally random), when I boot up my machine, I see that all the toolbars are messed up. This happens because there are Multiple Language Bars Present. One is called "Language Bar" (as normal) and there might also be 1, 2, or even 3 more "dummy" ones that are called "The Language Bar "and are empty.(The names can be found after Right-clicking the taskbar and choosing Toolbars).
Workaround
Every time this happens I have to access the language bars and disable the ones marked "The language bar ". The problem is that the "real" Language bar is the one disabled first, no matter which one you choose. So, I have to disable all of them (the "dummy" ones disappear after that), re-enable the "real" language bar, and rearrange all my toolbars which have (in the mean time) been all messed up.

But I have no idea as to the reason or any real solution...

Any ideas?

UPDATE:I have spotted one more problem related to this bug. Sometimes the workaround will not work because when you actually try to disable the "dummy" language bars, one of them remains on the tasbar, but not on the toolbars menu. So the workaround is impossible to implement, unless you actually reboot the PC.

 

There is one more hitch in this: I have also idetified it on Windows 2003 Terminal Server. And this time, there is one of "The Language Bar" 's that will not go away unless you restarr the session.

 

Multiple "The language bar" bug (windows xp sp 2)

I too have been having this problem; here are my observations:

When I started Windows XP (Home Edition, SP 1 & SP 2) , a blank area (or multiple blank areas) would appear in my Windows Taskbar.

After a certain windows upgrade, these blank areas would appear labeled as "The language bar" when I did a Right-Click on the Taskbar and selected "Toolbars ".

The following image shows a recent screenshot with multiple (duplicate) language bars appearing. (Note that I determined which was which by deselecting them in order -- the red lines are added by me to show you the associated spaces in the Taskbar, and were not appearing on the screen).



For the longest time I thought these blank areas were from some sort of spyware or malware; perhaps some process that was launching itself on startup for monitoring purposes. This was especially true before the blank areas were labeled (I think the "The language bar" labels were added under Toolbars by a Windows update; probably Service Pack 2).

I also found the labeling to be suspect: why is the real language bar titled "Language bar" and the others "The language bar "?

But now I suspect Windows is displaying an additional Language bar for each Keyboard you have enabled. (?)

For example, on my system I have :
English (Ireland)
English (United Kingdom)
English (United States)
Japanese

So maybe there's an extra language bar for each Keyboard beyond the default? (in this case, "English (United States) ")

[Note to Microsoft : if my suspicion is correct, a better labeling system would be "Language bar "; "Language bar (2) "; "Language bar (3) "...
or even better, "Language bar "; "Language bar (English UK); etc."]

The only thing I can think of trying at this point is playing with
the settings;
[Point to the main (real) Language Bar and Right-Click; then select "Settings ".]

http://lyberty.com/tech/windows/the_language_bar-preferences.gif

Or maybe you just have "Remove ", then re-Add, the additional Keyboard services?

Anyone else seen these "The language bar" and know how to prevent them appearing, or track them down in the registry?

 

hmm

At the Company i work at, we have the same problem with those language bars. On a regular base i have to put some members in the "user" group from the AD, then remove the L.bars and put them back in the "TS users" group. Then i ask them to relog, so that they can get there normal lanuage bar back.

It`s quite anoying and disturbing.

I hope somebody will find out a way to fix this problem.


p.s. We know what is causing it though. We are using a Dutch win2003 server, and our clients are English Xp embedded (thin clients). But we need a alternate fix, instead of getting a english version for the 2k3 server.

Yours Sincerely,
Nick