Change Language in Windows 7 Home and Professional

Microsoft does only allow to change the system language of Windows for Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate via the GUI. If you would like to change the language in Windows 7 Home and Professional you need to do that manually as described below (as a sample I describe how to change the language from English to German):

1. Download the desired language pack. You find a complete link list here on this site. For German and English I copy them below:
   German 32-bit
   German 64-bit
   English 32-bit
   English 64-bit
2. Download the exe2cab tool to convert the EXE file into a Microsoft CAB file.
3. Open a command prompt (as an Administrator!) and run the following commands[codesyntax lang=”dos” title=”Commands”]
   
   exe2cab <filename of your downloaded exe file> lp.cab dism /online /add-package /packagepath:lp.cab bcdedit /set {current} locale de-DE bcdboot %WinDir% /l de-DE

   1 2 3 4

   exe2cab <filename of your downloaded exe file> lp.cab dism /online /add-package /packagepath:lp.cab bcdedit /set {current} locale de-DE bcdboot %WinDir% /l de-DE

   
   [/codesyntax]
4. You then need to delete the following key from the registry:[codesyntax lang=”reg” title=”Registry key”]
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MUI\UILanguages\en-US

   1	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MUI\UILanguages\en-US

   
   [/codesyntax]
5. Reboot your machine

If you would like to change your language to or from another language you need to adapt the locale strings (like “de-DE” and “en-US” etc.) accordingly. A list of all strings can be found here.

Thank you to Tobias Hartmann!