Changing language in Windows XP. All of it or almost...

Recently, a customer's friend bought a Acer netbook for her from Japan. One problem though, she knows nothing about Japanese and the Windows XP installed is Japanese. Two unsavory solutions immediately come to mind: Buy another Windows license or; customer go the pirated route from someone else and install. Both will require driver hunting.

Fortunately, I found another near perfect solution.

Solution: Obtain Windows XP service pack 3 English version. Before installing the service pack, you must change some registry entries. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\Language registry key, and then change the value date for “Default” and “InstallLanguage” registry value to 0409 for American English. Restart Windows. After restarting, install the English version service pack and enable all updates.

Result: While not 100%, almost every icon and window are now in English. The exception was the mouse and wi-fi in Control Panel or taskbar. At least customer won't have to worry about spending more money for Windows license, or settling for pirated copy (this is Pinas after all), and no need for driver hunting, which is a good thing since Acer Japan website doesn't seem to have XP drivers available.