When Dictation doesn't Work
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.