greg.cole.name

Lately I’ve had to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on a few PC’s. One thing that really irks me is the lack of choice of which language it should set for the GUI. As with a lot of software these days it automatically configures the default language to that of the system locale. This isn’t so bad if you speak the local language or the operating system and company language are also in the local language but, what if you live in a foreign country and the official company language is english?

Well, Sun, and now Oracle seem to think this doesn’t matter. The only option left is to hack the java.dll to show the GUI in English (or whatever you want). A little research on the internet showed that it had been done for version 6.0.50.13 (JRE6u5) of the java.dll but I had installed version 6.0.200.2 (JRE6u20).

After opening the java.dll file in a hex editor and going to the noted offset 0x6BD0 brought no joy as the given hex values FF 15 A0 10 32 6D 8B F8 FF 15 A4 10 32 6D 57 89 were nowhere in sight. A partial search for FF 15 A0 10 brought up the almost identical values FF 15 A0 10 34 6D 8B F8 FF 15 A4 10 34 6D 57 89 at offset 0x6EF0.

So, a quick cut and paste swapping the above values for 68 09 04 00 00 58 8B F8 68 09 04 00 00 58 57 89 and we’re in business. The bytes indicated in bold are where you insert the values for the locale you wish to configure. This one is hardcoded for US English but you can find a list of language locales here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd318693(v=VS.85).aspx. You will also need to reverse the bytes in the values i.e. 0409 (US English) to 0904.

Now that I have the dll hardcoded into showing english all I have to do now is install the JRE6u20 and swap out the original java.dll for the modified one and now the java GUI shows up in english. I did this on a Windows 7 64 bit OS (32 bit Java) but it should work on XP and Vista too.