Start an application with specific regional settings

Question

I have to work with different applications which are, in my opinion, not wisely-coded; they require the user to use specific regional settings. For example, some applications I use require that the user have an MM/DD/YYYY date format, while others require that the date format be YYYY-MM-DD.

Is there a known way to create some kind of "regional setting file" and launch an application in a sandbox with these settings? I'm looking for something less demanding than using a virtual machine.

Solution 1

You can try the AppLocale program from Microsoft. It isn't officially supported on Windows 7/Vista, but people have posted workarounds.

I have gotten it to work on Windows 7 back in the RC days.

Solution 2

Reading your question, I knew the answer was not natively, so I went looking for software that might provide that functionality, but I don't think it exists.

I Googled (minus quotes): "change regional settings", "change regional settings multiple profiles", and nothing remotely related was returned. "Change regional settings profiles software" returned this, but it is not clear what OS it will run on. It is also not clear that it would change a single application, but rather, more like just make it easier to change them for the whole OS.

http://virnetas-regional-settings-changer.software.informer.com/

To be honest, I have strong doubts that you will find what you are looking for. Good luck.

Comments

[Tipx]

Thanks for your reply. I think I'm gonna have to code myself a "wrapper program" that would launch the said applications and trick them into believing something that is not, but I'm not sure it's gonna be a fun thing to do :-S

[hicklypups]

You could run them in a virtual machine. I would probably do that, but I am not a coder.