AppLocale tutorial – Installing foreign-language legacy Windows games and applications

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Switzerland C.A.V.E.
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Published on ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uac8c-Jx-bM


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Tutorial
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Are you trying to install and run foreign-language Windows games and applications which stem from the pre-Unicode days? If the language in question uses a character set incompatible to the one of your main Windows language, this can lead to problems in rendering text. Microsoft provides a compatibility tool called AppLocale which you can use to run certain applications using a different character set. This is much quicker and simpler than changing the regional settings of your entire Windows setup.

Running applications using AppLocale is easy enough, but there are some pitfalls when you need, or want, to use it for software installation. In this video, I use the example of Japanese game Densha de GO! to demonstrate how to get around these and get the software installed.

Here are the main points at a glance:

Because installers require administrator privileges, you cannot run them using a user-level instance of AppLocale. AppLocale itself has to run with administrator rights. Unfortunately, you can't achieve this from its start menu shortcut, but will have to locate its executable manually and run it from there.

Once AppLocale is running under admin privileges, you can no longer drag executables onto its window (presumably because it's now running in a different context than the Explorer view you're likely dragging from). You have to locate the program manually.

Also, AppLocale fails to detect the correct language setting for many applications, including most installers. You'll have to manually select the correct setting.

Finally, some artefacts can remain with regards to file system paths. For example, Japanese software is likely to display a Yen symbol instead of a backslash. (I assume this is because your file system is still managed in the original character encoding?) Fortunately, you can ignore this issue as paths, while not looking very nice, will work anyway.

I hope this is of help to anyone, let me know if there are any questions or specific problems.



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Windows
AppLocale
Tutorial