What is Ctfmon.exe?

[Avinash Kaur]

Hello Everyone,

I would like to know that what is Ctfmon.exe? I don't know any thing about it. Whenever i try to shutdown my system an annoying "POPUP Box" comes on my screen stating that there's some problem with your Microsoft Office in your Add and Remove program. I had even checked my Microsoft Office but it seems to be working fine. Can any one tell me how do i disabled ctfmon.exe, from reappearing all the time,while turning off my system?Can any one tell me how can i do it and provide me the complete detail about it? Any kind of help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Devasis]

When you run a Microsoft Office XP program, the file Ctfmon.exe (Ctfmon) runs in the background, even after you quit all Office programs.

Ctfmon.exe activates the Alternative User Input Text Input Processor (TIP) and the Microsoft Office Language Bar.

Remove the Ctfmon.exe File

Removing the Ctfmon.exe might cause problematic behavior in your Office XP programs, so removing it is not recommended.

[Solomon]

When you run a Microsoft Office XP program, the file Ctfmon.exe (Ctfmon) runs in the background, even after you quit all Office programs.
Ctfmon.exe monitors the active windows and provides text input service support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative user input technologies.

Note: The ctfmon.exe file is located in the folder C:\Windows\System32. In other cases, ctfmon.exe is a virus, spyware, trojan or worm.

[MrChris-]

Ctfmon is the Microsoft process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar. It's how you can control the computer via speech or a pen tablet, or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for Asian languages.

If you are using any of the above, you should leave it enabled. For everybody else, we'll get to the job of disabling this annoying service. Depending on your system configuration, there are a number of different steps to disable it. I've tried to list all the methods below.

Disabling in Windows XP

There's an additional step we can take to make sure it gets turned off in Windows XP, which really seems to be the best answer for XP users.

Open up Control Panel and choose Regional and Language Options.

Choose the Languages tab and then click on Details in the top section.

Now on the Advanced tab you can choose to "Turn off advanced text services", which should immediately close ctfmon.

You'll also want to take a look at the first Settings tab, and make sure that your "Installed Services" box looks similar to this one.

If you have more than one Installed service then ctfmon might come back. For instance on my system there was an input for my drawing tablet so I could use it as a text input… which I don't care about, so I clicked Remove on it.

[Calvin K]

Ctfmon.exe is a process belonging to Microsoft Office Suite. It activates the Alternative User Input Text Input Processor (TIP) and the Microsoft Office XP Language Bar. "This program is a non-essential system process, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.

Note:- ctfmon.exe should not be disabled, required for essential applications to work properly..

[Humberto]

You can also refer to thread ctfmon.exe

[Big Fish]

You can see this file running in Task manager by pressing ctrl + alt + del key from the key board. It is not considered as a malicious tool or harmful to your system anyway. It is configured in the start up services and launch up at the time of start up. Normally your must not stop it or remove it because it related to the language schemes and translations. It supports east asian languages, speech or text recognistion. Basically maximum of user dose not required it. By removing it you can free about your 8 mb of ram. If really don't want then go to start menu > control panel and click on Regional and Language Options. Go to the language tab and select details button under the text service and Input languages. Now go to advance tab. Tick on the turn off advance text services box. Now the file ctfmon.exe will not work. It will not load at the startup of your system anymore. If you want it back follow the same process to turn it on.