Textboxes and codepages/unicode

[Chris C]

Hi

I am working with a legacy application which uses SQL 2000 and varchar
fields. Its not possible for me to convert the fields at this time to
nvarchars.

So i have converted russian into windows-1251 encoding and stored the
resulting encoded string into the database. I first created this
page in coldfusion and simply inserted

"<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type "CONTENT="text/html;
charset=windows-1251">"

into the head of the document. I was able to add text boxes which
displayed and accepted the right characters and store them back into
the database.

I now need to complete the same project with vb.net.

P1) Textboxes seem to html encode the sting before it reaches the
webpage. Why is this?

For example:

Îá èíñòðóêòîðå (Об
инструкторе)

Is acutally being encoded to this by the text box:

Îá íñòðóêòîðå

Why is this? How can i stop it?

P2) Even when i am able to enter in a phrase in russian say
"Об инструкторе"
i get empty string back from the form when its submitted as it appears
to only accept ascii characters. I set up the encoding type of the
response and request to unicode and the codepage to window-1251 this
allows the page to display russian fine when not inside a web control.
Once inside a web control it starts to cause problems.

Could someone please explain to me what i am doing wrong?