Play non-English version WarCraft on an English Windows7

Windows 7 x64 English

One of my friends called me that he has trouble in playing the WarCraft on his system. He bought the laptop in Australia, pre-installed the Windows 7 English language version. However, when he wanted to launch the game, something went wrong:

"WC3 required specific version of Windows"

The source of this issue is that Blizzard implemented a system locale check. If the game locale and the system locale are not equal, WarCraft will load extra language pack.

Luckily, some experts (or hackers?) on the network provided an possible solution: modify the game DLL(Dynamic Link Library).

That "Game.dll" file is normally located in the root folder of the game, you can easily figure it out.

Then, use some Hex editor to edit the file. You could use WinHex, UltraEdit, or

Notepad++ with Hex plugin.

Notepad++: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

HexEditor plugin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-plugins/files/Hex Editor/

Just copy "HexEditor.dll" to //notepad++//plugins folder ,it will take effect.

Launch notepad++, and open Game.dll (Remember BACKUP the original file!)

then

click the menu bar: plugin -> HEX Editor -> View in HEX

Search string:

3D04080000742A3D04

Modify the 74 to EB, then save the file.

ALL DONE! Enjoy the game.

======================= Other issues ==================================

"I am using gForce 310M, but the game does not run as smooth as it does in the Windows XP"

WC3 runs on DirectX 8.1 while Windows only capacity with DX9 and DX10. Convert operations slow the fps and heavy the CPU's workload.

It is better to switch the game 3D render engine into OpenGL mode to optimize the performance.

Create a new shortcut of the game and add some startup parameter after it:
" -opengl"
Please note that there is an initial space.
Now it should looks like:
"D:\WarCraftIII\" -opengl

Sometimes, activate the shadow effects (under OpenGL) will crash the game.

--------------

"I have a FullHD screen, but the game only supports 1024x768 resolution"

Run "regedit"

Expand the brunch

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III\Video

modify the value:

resheight 640 

reswidth 480

to your resolution.