java not displaying system language

[theotrain]

all my java apps (and applets) show in mandarin chinese. how is this possible?

im running vista. my system locale is set to US english. english is the only language pack i have installed. my browsers are set to show english. everything runs in english on my computer, except java.

i have read that java uses the language specified in "system locale". well not on my machine it doesnt.

i had a mandarin learning program installed about a year ago which ive since removed. i cannot vouch for the state of my system at the time java was installed, but chances are java was already installed and it switched to chinese at that time. now i cant get it back. is it possible that my java is somehow installed as a chinese version? i just installed netbeans IDE and all the menus and such are in chinese, its pretty unusable.

any ideas? can a reinstall help perhaps, and if so what would i need to reinstall?

im attaching an image of my indecipherable java control panel.

 

[Diancecht]

I guess you installed Java in Chinese. I'd uninstall and reinstall: it's free.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[theotrain]

well that didnt do anything. i uninstalled every kind of java. restarted, and as soon as i start to install the JDK i see the java dialog boxes in chinese.

so where is it getting this crazy idea? the java download is "multi-language" you dont get to pick, it handles everything for you.

take a look at the attachment to see all the places i looked for another language on my system with no luck. i even went in and removed all the chinese fonts from my font mapping registry, on the theory that it was trying to show english but using a font that was being mapped to mandarin somehow?

i have literally tried everything i can think of. this issue is making some of my java-based applications hard to use, and others unusable (to me). any ideas out there?

 

[Diancecht]

Any help here

Cheers,
Dian

 

[theotrain]

that page, and all others ive seen, seems to be premised on the idea that java uses the language specified by the system locale. mine is already set to US english, but java is NOT using this language.

i found some instructions for changing the language with programming, and on the command line when you run a java program. that stuff actually works, but my main issue is not getting my own apps to run in english, its getting other apps and applets to run in english, so those fixes are of no use to me.

i need a way to globally set the default language for the JRE, and system locale isnt doing the job. i wonder if there is a config file or something to override it?

i ran a program to list all my available system locales in java. there are a bunch. i wonder if i could delete all those other available languages if it would just show me english. but i dont know how to do that.

obviously the notion that java gets its language from the system locale is not right. maybe it does that by default, but obviously there are exceptions that nobody is talking about, so there must be a config file or some other way to change it???

 

[theotrain]

using Locale.getDefault() i have verified that the default language for my java apps is "zh_CN". i need it to be "en_US" which is on my list of available locales in the system but obviously not coming up as the default for some reason, even though its set that way in windows.

 

[TonHu]

The Locale information on Vista has changed, I heard my colleague working on a .NET team complain about this 'feature', and how in-compatible it is with Windows XP.
Is your 'system locale' set to Chinese (zh_CN) by any chance?

HTH
TonHu

 

[theotrain]

no, its set to english(US), i have no other language packs installed.

in the second link i included above you can see screen shots of all my regional and language settings. somehow, although my system locale is set to us english, java is seeing it as chinese.

thats the problem in a nutshell. but its a problem i dont see any websites addressing even as a possible behaviour of java.