About a year ago I installed one of the usual Windows updates and when I
rebooted my computer (Win XP SP2 home edition) I found that Control Panel was
no longer Control Panel but Panneau de Configuration, everything works just
fine and there were no other changes, only this unusual change of language.
Is there a way I can change the name back to Control Panel, I mean it's not
really a problem it's just weird and somehow annoying.

Crobex wrote:
> About a year ago I installed one of the usual Windows updates and when I
> rebooted my computer (Win XP SP2 home edition) I found that Control Panel was
> no longer Control Panel but Panneau de Configuration, everything works just
> fine and there were no other changes, only this unusual change of language.
> Is there a way I can change the name back to Control Panel, I mean it's not
> really a problem it's just weird and somehow annoying.

You might look through Control Panel, Regional and Language Options and
see if everything there is set to English. In particular, remove any
reference to French language.. unless you also use that language.

You could also look through the registry (with regedit) for any
reference to "Panneau de Configuration" and maybe change it to "Control
Panel".

One thread I found with a Google Groups search:
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...0fdf9a4cbda076

--
Joe =o)

thank you for your answer, but unfortunately neither of your suggestions did
work, I read the google groups thread you listed but I couldn't find the file
listed there on my system, I hope there's another way to fix this problem

Crobex wrote:
> thank you for your answer, but unfortunately neither of your suggestions did
> work, I read the google groups thread you listed but I couldn't find the file
> listed there on my system, I hope there's another way to fix this problem

Did you do the regedit search for "Panneau de Configuration"?

Click Start, Run, type SFC /SCANNOW, click OK. If any files are damaged
or missing, they'll be replaced. You may need to reboot afterwards so
damaged files will be replaced.

Do you have the French Language as one of your alternate languages?

--
Joe =o)

I tried SFC /SCANNOW and didn't help with the Control Panel it's still in
French, it also worsened the situation, because now I can't use custom Visual
Styles anymore.

P.S. I don't have French installed as an alternate language.

Crobex wrote:
> I tried SFC /SCANNOW and didn't help with the Control Panel it's still in
> French, it also worsened the situation, because now I can't use custom Visual
> Styles anymore.
>
> P.S. I don't have French installed as an alternate language.

That's bizarre.. All SFC does is "scan and verify the versions of all
protected system files". "If sfc discovers that a protected file has
been overwritten, it retrieves the correct version of the file from the
%systemroot%\system32\dllcache folder, and then replaces the incorrect
file."

Did you reboot? That might get it working again..

Here are four MSKB articles on "Custom Visual Styles" in XP:

http://search.microsoft.com/results....US&PageType=99

--
Joe =o)

Thank you, I've already fixed this problem with Visual Styles, but the French
Control Panel remains

Crobex wrote:
> Thank you, I've already fixed this problem with Visual Styles, but the French
> Control Panel remains

Here's another suggestion.. I think it's a good one, but it may not help
if you succeed:

Do a search of all files for any with the text "Panneau" (no quotes).
Once found, edit the file and change "Panneau de Configuration" to
"Control Panel". This could be dangerous, or just plain disastrous if
you edit a file with unseen characters and lose those critical bytes of
information. If you survive the edit, and still have control of
Windows, you could restore the "previously saved copy" of the file.

Start off looking for the text in files in the Windows folder, then
branch out. It's a slow search because every line of text needs to be
searched in every file. And I believe there's a problem with Windows
Search doing this search in non-text documents.

A Google Groups search found this:

"Try the script on this page by Doug Know MVP. It adds file types to
that search option.

Windows XP:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_bad_search.htm "

--
Joe =o)