CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++windowswinapiwindows-mui
Gareth Oakley
Gareth Oakley

Reputation: 1030

Getting Language of Windows Startup Messages

I'm currently trying to get my head around MUI, and getting some issues with GetSystemDefaultUILanguage - it's not returning the language I'd expect:

Welcome screen and new user accounts settings dialog

Users can set the language used for Windows startup messages in the "Welcome screen and new user accounts settings" dialog - which claims to copy language settings to system accounts. I'd expect therefore to be able to get the language used by startup messages using GetSystemDefaultUILanguage - but it seems to only ever come back with the language used to originally install the OS. How can I get the startup messages language?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1175

Answers (1)

Gareth Oakley
Gareth Oakley

Reputation: 1030

It appears that GetSystemDefaultUILanguage returns the language that the OS was originally installed with. In 2K8 R2 at least (and probably other post-Vista OSes) users can modify the language used for boot up messages - but this is unfortunately not reflected through GetSystemDefaultUILanguage.

It can however be looked up via the registry. The following value stores a textual description (e.g. en-US) of the language:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MUI\Settings\PreferredUILanguages

This value only appears to be set on machines with multiple languages installed (and possibly only when a user has changed the Welcome Screen language).

So, to get the current Welcome Screen language, the flow appears to be:

  • Attempt to read PreferredUILanguages
  • If found, parse to a language ID
  • Otherwise, call GetSystemDefaultUILanguage
  • Load the appropriate language resources given the returned language ID

This wouldn't be such a pain if we weren't trying to display things in a different language at boot time! Normally you can just use GetUserDefaultUILanguage.

Upvotes: 2

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