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How can I change the system-default regional settings in windows XP for use by services (run by the system user)?

Regional and Language Options in the control panel modify the settings for the logged-in user. However, services don't use the user's settings - they use the system settings. I know that they can be found in the registry here:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International

My question is: What mechanism is there for changing the system-language/date/etc from en-us to en-gb?

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5 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

There is no documented way to do that.

A quick look in the Regional Settings Applet dll shows that it calls a totally undocumented API: NlsUpdateSystemLocale().

Why do you want to do that? Do you want to control the locale of a service of yours? Then let your service run under a user account you control.

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Could you not use regedt32 on a machine and make all the correct settings...then export the International folder by right clicking and export the reg file.

you can manually edit the exported reg file if you dont need all the settings

then you can run that reg file on a new machine to import the registry keys etc?

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This was helpfull for me "Apply regional and language settings to reserved accounts".

In short (Windows 7): Open "Region and Language" dialog, then click the "Administrative" tab, and then click "Copy settings...", select "Welcome screen and system accounts", OK.

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Shame this isn't available in older versions :-( –  SteveC Jan 14 '11 at 12:22
This helped me fix the regional settings for my NETWORK / IIS account. Thanks!! –  Matt Miller Mar 8 '13 at 21:29
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Not so easy.

Fast way: define a specific user to run the service, logon with that user, set the regional settings, run the service.

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IM not sure if this will help

First type in gpedit.msc from the run command and a dialog box should now open. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Regional Settings.

This shows the group polcies for the PC/s, maybe you can just set it so en_gb is the only option!!

Group Policy is not my strong point, but do a google search and go from there, I would imagine that you should be able to set up who and what can do what from here.


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