NOTE. Type Russian or Ukrainian without system keyboard -

On-screen Russian Keyboard - Virtual Cyrillic keyboard - Russian and Ukrainian:

winrus.com/keyboard.htm   = (short alias) TypeRus.com

That is, if you do not have Windows 2000 CD-ROM, then you are in trouble...
Unlike Windows NT 4.0, it is NOT enough just to copy one file kbdru.dll to your system folder - "Russian" still will not appear in the list of national keyboards when you try to add one.
Only after you insert Windows 2000 CD-ROM and let the system do all the things, you will be able to choose "Russian" in the list and have it in the top, "Input Locale" field shown on this screen-shot and later have "RU"/"Russian" indicator on your taskbar.
It will also let you use MS Word's Russian Proofing Tools such as Spellchecker(if you have them), because in MS Word ver. 97 and higner the language is recognized based on the keyboard mode.

Without Windows 2000 CD-ROM you have two options - either find a person who has it and borrow it for 10 minutes (I just asked an IT person at work), which is a preferred way that will let you see "Russian" keyboard in the list as shown above and later see "RU" on taskbar,
and use all other functionality provided by the proper Cyrillic Support or
if you cannot get this CD-ROM at all, then you can use my work-around for Windows 2000, but it's not pretty... This page describes my work-around. If you'd have Windows 2000 CD-ROM then you do not need any of the things descibed below...

Keyboard stuff is kind of system-level stuff, it's Operating System tools and therefore it requires a little bit more effort and knowledge than say making browser to read Russian Web pages, so be patient.

First thing you need to do is to check whether Windows considers you a complete novice or not:

• open Windows Explorer, you standard file manager. You can do it for example by sumiltaneously clicking on left button with Windows logo on it and then on the button with letter "E".
  Or by doing Start/Programs/Accessories and choosing "Windows Explorer" there or by clicking on "My Computer" and clicking on "C:\" which is your hard drive with folders/files.
  That Explorer program lets you create folders(directories), copy files between the folders, etc.

  In the menu of Explorer, go to Folder Options screen:
  depending on the version, it's either in

  • View/Folder Options
    or
  • Tools / Folder Options (in Windows 2000 - go to the "View" tab there)

• find there an option called "Hide File Extensions for known file types" or something like this. If it's checked then uncheck it - while working with keyboard we need to see xxx.KBD or xxx.DLL or xxx.REG, that is we do need to see the extensions.
  But even for other tasks I think to forbid Windows to hide the extensions is a good choice - why let Windows consider you a novice who is afraid to see file extensions? In many cases this default hiding can be even dangerous - you will see 2 files, both will have the same name and you would not know which is which, because the extensions are not shown...

• find there an option called "Show All Files"
  (under Windows 2000/XP/2003 it's called "Hide Protected Operating System Files")
  and make sure that it is selected - we want to see all files, even system ones:
  keyboard layout files are system files.

• Now go to another tab there - "File Types" and find there, at the very bottom of the list, an item "ZIP".
  Click on "Advanced" button below the description text.
  Make sure that you have a check mark next to "Confirm open after download" - such setting is useful not just for the present instruction, but in general, too.

1. Download small self-extracting archive with needed files

Create a new folder on your computer, say C:\kbd2000 (I will use that as an example).

Download the following file and place it to that folder:   kbd2000.exe

Using Windows Explorer, go to that folder and double-click on that file/archive.
The files kept inside that archive will be extracted and you will see them in that folder either at once or when you click F5 to refresh.

2. Activate Russian keyboard layouts

Now you see four new files in that folder where you opened my archive.

You need to copy two keyboard layout files - kbdru.dll and kbdru1.dll - to the \System32 sub-folder of the main Windows folder.
Usually under Windows 2000 the folder where Windows Operating System is kept is called "WinNT" so you need to copy these two files to C:\WinNT\System32.

Go back now to the folder where you placed my files and find there two .REG files.
They are to register standard keyboard layouts "Russian" and "Russian (Typewriter)" in the system.

Double-click on Std_ru.REG.
You should get a message that the information has been was successfuly entered into the Registry.

Double-click on Std_ru1.REG.
You should get a message that the information has been was successfuly entered into the Registry.

Re-start your Windows to make the Registry changes take effect

3. Make standard Russian layout usable

As it was said at the top of this page, you can not see any "Russian" in the list of national keyboard until you insert Windows 2000 CD-ROM.
So we will need to use some other national keyboard from that list and then assign standard Russian layout to that language.

You can choose any language that you are not going to use - say, Swedish for example (whose indicator abbreviation is "SV"):

1. Start / Settings / Control Panel
2. In the CONTROL PANEL window - double-click on KEYBOARD
3. In the KEYBOARD window, select Input Locales
4. Click on ADD

5. Find and choose "Swedish" in the list of "Input Locales"
6. Below, in bottom field "Keyboard Layout", choose "Russian"
7. Click "OK"

8. You are back to the "Input Locales" window and what you see is:
   • "SV" below "EN" in the "Input Language" column
   • "Russian" in that line in the "Keyboard Layout" column
   
   That is, from now on you will be getting Russian letters after switching to the "SV" mode of keyboard!

   Important! It's all you need to do. Do NOT make Russian your "Default" keyboard! First, there is no need to do so, and second, it brings a huge problem with Login screen (User ID and password usually are not in Russian, so, you will not be able to type them if your keyboard is in Russian mode).

   Make sure that you have the option "Enable Indicator on Taskbar" checked (it's at the bottom of this window):
   you will see EN or SV at the right end of the Taskbar.
   As instructed, use the combination of buttons LeftAlt+RightShift to switch between SV/Russian and English.
   Or you can use a mouse to do so by clicking on the indicator in your taskbar.

9. Click on Apply below right
10. Click on Ok.

That's it! You managed to activate standard Russian keyboard layout - Ok, as Swedish, but it's all you could do without Windows 2000 CD-ROM.

Now you can either type in Russian using this standard layout (see its picture below) - by switching to SV/Russian mode on your keyboard or use instead a phonetic (transliterated) Russian layout where
'A'-'A', 'O'-'O', 'K'-'K', etc.
To do so please read the instructions in the
"Typing Russian on any keyboard: standard and phonetic layout" section of my site but keep in mind that you still will have Swedish as a keyboard language for Russian, that is, you will be still switching to "SV"/"Russian" in your taskbar because you could not find Windows 2000 CD-ROM.

For you to decide whether you want standard layout or phonetic one:
here is the picture of standard MS Windows keyboard layout for Russian (in upper-case mode, with SHIFT key pressed to show you top row assignments) made for the countries of the former USSR (where keyboards have Russian letters on them):

You can also look at this layout by going to a Microsoft site, where they show pictures for all supported languages:

• "Microsoft: Global Software Development - Keyboard Layouts" where you can click on Shift, etc. on that picture to see the location of the letters (but this MS page may not work under Netscape/Mozilla)