How to change default region/culture settings in Windows 2012

group-policylocalizationwindows-server-2012

I have researched this topic through the web but can't find a definitive answer.

Our server team has recently upgraded our SQL Servers VMs from Win 2003 to Win 2012.

Given our region we run all our in-house built apps under en-ZA.

However we have a work around where SQL Server 2012 needs to run under an account with en-US settings. This is to support a legacy metastorm workflow application.

The issue comes into play when the sql server agent job triggers a console app (en-ZA) to generate a comma delimited file with large monetary values.

The agent is running under en-US so the app goes "SOMEWHERE" (I am hoping an editable OS store of sorts) and gets the "DEFAULT" en-ZA settings which have changed since Win 2003.

The comma delimited file now has a decimal separator of "COMMA" instead of "DOT". Previous Win 2003 version had a "DOT" decimal separator for large monetary values.

The comma in the monetary values causes an issue in another importer app down the line.

The question is where are the default values for the region stored? and how can they be changed? I need to know this so I can revert the default settings for en-ZA to the way it was in Win 2003.

I know region settings can be customized for an account but how can the actual default en-ZA settings be changed.

If I can understand this then maybe this can be corrected via group policy.

Best Answer

You can also do it from the Control Panel, without changing manually the registry. There's an option allowing you to apply the Current User settings to the System Accounts.

Open Language --> Advanced settings --> Apply language settings to...

Language --> Advanced settings

Then click the button "Copy Settings" and check the option "Copy to Welcome Screen and System Accounts".

Done.

Copy Settings