Running Chinese Software on an English version of Windows

Normally trying to run a piece of software that was designed to run on a Chinese version of windows on an English version of windows will result in most of the Chinese text and menus being displayed as gibberish. Most copies of windows wont allow you to change the System Locale either. And even if you can change the System Locale this requires a system reboot and can then cause problems with some English language software.

The answer is SBAppLocale. This is a very simple command line program that only needs to be used once on each program that you want to change the Locale. This is only for Windows XP and you must have the needed Chinese font installed on your computer.

If you want to use a program that is called say “TaiwanApp”. You need to first install the software then find the directory it was installed to and locate TaiwanApp.exe. Now download SBAppLocale and copy it into the TaiwanApp directory. Next open the windows command prompt and go to the same directory. Now type,
SBAppLocale 1028 TaiwanApp.exe

The number 1028 represents the Chinese (Taiwan) Locale. Other Chinese Locales are,
3076 Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R.)
5124 Chinese (Macau S.A.R.)
2052 Chinese (PRC)
4100 Chinese (Singapore)