How to test localized winforms application?

Question

Background:

I have created sample windows application for learning to implement localization. My each form has two RESX file. One for Bulgaria and one for French(Belgium). It has default culture English(XX)

To test locally currently I am programmatically changing UICulture i.e. Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("fr-BE"); And it works fine.

Problem:

How can I test without forcing the UI Culture programatically? I have tried changing Control Panel > Regional Options > Standard and Formats to French(Belgium). That made changes to DatePickerControl and now it display the dates French. However I can still see the Button text in English, where as if I test by injecting CultureInfo programmatically it changes to french.

If I am able to change the standard and formats to French do I still need to Install Multilingual User Interface Pack (MUI)?

There is another question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/544620/how-do-i-test-localization-in-a-winforms-application However it does not answer my question.

Answer 1

You could use VM's installed with different localized OS', i.e. French XP, Japanese XP etc. We used this method to test localization as, like you say, just changing your language / timezone settings isn't enough.