A Solution to Your Hacking Tools Showing Strange Values

[Akiba]

Introduction
First of all, I didn't exactly know where to put this, so I put it in the Tutorials section.
More and more people have been coming up with questions about their ROM editors showing random hex values, or not even being able to function altogether. Lower down the page is a collection of screenshots that exhibit this. If you are getting a Read/Write permission error or File Not Found error, it is probably because of the fact that your ROM is open in another program.

Understanding the Problem
Your computer was set up with traits incompatible with the hacking tool.
For example, I set up my computer in Japanese, so naturally, it would be in a Japanese encoding, instead of Unicode, which is used by machines set up in American English.

Fixing the Problem
The easiest way is to get on another computer and hope that it works. Of course, many of us can't get to a second computer.

So what do we do now?

Solution 1 (If you have programs that depend on your current system language encoding, choose this.)

Spoiler:

Get Oracle VM VirtualBox (or just VirtualBox for sanity), and a regular Windows .ISO disk image, be it XP, Vista, or 7. Just make sure that your tool will actually run on any machine of that type.
Open VirtualBox, select a virtual machine, and set it up just like you would any regular computer.

After you are done setting it up, the easiest thing to do would be to put your tool and ROM on a flash drive from your actual computer, transfer the serial bus to the Virtual Machine, and run it from there. Now, if you don't have a flash drive, you could put the files in your Public Shared Folder on your local network.

I'm sorry for not providing links to VirtualBox or an .ISO image, as I question the acceptability of those on these fora.

If you have any questions about using a Virtual Machine, ask on this page, VM, or PM me.

Solution 2 (If all of your programs are in English anyway, choose this.)

Spoiler:

Click the Start button, then Control Panel, then Clock, Language, and Region, and then Regional and Language Options.

Choose the Administrative tab, and under Language for non-Unicode programs (System Locale), click Change system locale and select your encoding.

Select the language, and restart your computer.

Screenshots

Spoiler:

 

[hackstar]

There are other many old tools which has bug too.

 

[Akiba]

There are other many old tools which has bug too.

Of course. But we don't want to get repetitive, do we?

Four examples is enough to me.

 

[HidoranBlaze]

DeltaSalamence
I think xYggdrasill is referring to changing the system locale in windows.
this apparently changes the computer so that it can use unicode (or non-unicode, depending on the default system locale). This does help with fixing advance text and other tools, as i've noticed, but it might also screw around with the non-unicode programs after the default system locale is changed to a locale that uses unicode
so if you're not worried about your non-unicode programs getting screwed, then i guess this is a good method to use.