When Dictation doesn't Work

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WSR Dictation should always work in Wordpad.  If you're having problems with dictation, make sure it works in Wordpad.

 

If dictation doesn’t work in WordPad:

1)  Start regedit, go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech\Preferences\en-us\ and remove any value named DictationEnabled.

If there is no registry key named DictationEnabled, then

2)  Check %windir%\ime\sptip.dll - it should exist, be 128KB in size, and have a file version of 6.0.6001.17128 and a product version of 6.0.6000.16386.

3)  The file %windir%\ime\en-us\sptip.dll.mui should also exist.

4)  Make sure ctfmon.exe is running.  It should start at login (there is a scheduled task that starts it).

 

If dictation works in WordPad, but doesn't work in your application:

Your application probably doesn't support TSF.  Complain to your vendor.  You can enable a (very limited) version of dictation by checking 'Enable Dictation Everywhere' in the Windows Speech Recognition context menu.