One of the features included with Windows Vista was speech recognition, a supposed feature that would revolutionize how we use computers:
We totally believe speech recognition will go mainstream somewhere over the next decade.
- Bill Gates, Sept. 2005 (view more quotes here)
This tutorial will show you how to install speech recognition for XP using the Microsoft Speech SDK. If you’ve got a copy of Office XP or 2003 handy, please follow this tutorial on Microsoft’s website.
For everyone else, please download the Microsoft Speech SDK here (see picture above for correct file).
The file you download is an executable zip file. Double click it, and tell it a path to extract to. We chose \My Documents\Downloads\speech.
Head into the folder you extracted the files to, and double click setup.exe.
It’s a pretty standard installation, but for your convenience we’ve put a picture tutorial below.
Click Next.
Accept the license agreement (unless you don’t), then click Next.
Optional. Just click Next if you’d like.
Keep the default, unless you dislike it. Click Next. The installation will start, and show you a finish screen when you’re done.
When it’s done, head to the Control Panel and double click on Speech. You’ll be greeted with the Speech Recognition dialog. Before you can start using Speech Recognition, click Train Profile.
Once you’re finished training your profile, head back to the Control Panel and double-click Regional and Language Options. Click the Language tab. Click Details. Verify that Speech Recognition is listed under English.
Click the Language Bar… under Preferences. Make sure the language bar is set to display on the desktop.
Click the Advanced tab, and make sure Extend support of advanced text services to all programs is checked. Click OK.
Once you’re done, a language bar should appear and you should be able to hit Speech to enable it. Unforutunately, speech recognition does not appear to be as full featured as within Vista. In a future post we’ll show you how to make the best of XP speech recognition.
How well does it work? I haven’t used anything like this in a while, but I remember speech recognition used to be pretty clunky.
@Jo: It has its own quirks here and there, but it’s quite adequate (as far as I’ve tested).
You are awesome. It took me years to find the speech sdk and hours and tens of google pages later, I found your tutorial on getting speech recognition on xp to actually work. Some other flake’s website article said to download it, but no clue how to get the toolbar interface to work. I suppose I may have stumbled on it eventually, but your page had the actual instructions. Thank you!
@Jonathan: Thanks! I’m glad you found it helpful.
Hey, i’m downloading now, i hope it works. I could do with this on XP, since i use it more than my Vista!
Darn it dont work when i try … oh well
Daniel: What part of the procedure didn’t work?
when i talk, nothing happens
and when i try to configure it, it goes into red not green.
Daniel: I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Is it possible to take a print screen and upload it to an image hosting service?