Base language set to Chinese

Hello all.

I'm an English teacher living and working in China.

I've just bought an iMac from a shop here and, as part of the setup process in the shop, the sales assistant turned the iMac on for the very first time and when prompted for the 'base language' of the Mac, chose Chinese, despite my protestations.

I've set up an administrator account and everything is in English, but every so often, I have messages which are in Chinese - for example the popup telling you that your mouse is connected/disconnected.

My worry is that at some point there will be an error message of some kind in Chinese which my Chinese wife will not understand or be able to translate.

Is there a way to reverse this and put the base language of the iMac into English?

Use the install disk that came with the iMac and boot with it. Select English as the language and then proceed with a reinstall of OS X. Note that a reinstall could destroy data. (You neglected to tell us which version of OS X you're iMac is running.) If your new iMac came preinstalled with Lion you won't have a disk.

Before you reinstall make a backup using Time Machine to backup to an external hard drive.

So I have to re-install the entire OS?

You're right, there's no disc. I bought it on Tuesday so I'm assuming it's the latest version.

ginginho said:

So I have to re-install the entire OS?

You're right, there's no disc. I bought it on Tuesday so I'm assuming it's the latest version.

Click to expand...

Not to fret just yet as you will have Lion 10.7.x installed and  have made a Recovery Partition with the Lion OS on it so you can do a reinstall and it will be easy.
Reboot holding down the "option" key. Then choose the Recovery Partition and do your reinstall. Should take no longer than 30 mins.
Post back and let us know how you went.


Cheers

TattooedMac said:

Not to fret just yet as you will have Lion 10.7.x installed and  have made a Recovery Partition with the Lion OS on it so you can do a reinstall and it will be easy.
Reboot holding down the "option" key. Then choose the Recovery Partition and do your reinstall. Should take no longer than 30 mins.
Post back and let us know how you went.


Cheers

Click to expand...

I've tried this and it wanted to download additional components. The download crapped out as the internet speed here is terrible. The first time it wanted at least 6 hours to finish, the second 430+ (!)

Will the shop be able to give me a disc with the OS on it, do you think?

Not unless they created an install disk, as there are no Lion prepared commercial disks as there have been in the past with other versions of OS X. However, you can buy Lion on a flash drive from Apple for $69. On line only.

I would ask the shop to create an install disk or flash drive for you. I'm sure they would be willing to do that for a small fee.

ginginho said:

Will the shop be able to give me a disc with the OS on it, do you think?

Click to expand...

I believe from the  Store you can buy USB with Lion on it from $69 USD. Ring up your local dealer and see if they have them in stock. Apple made these available to people like you with bad connections.

Cheers

For a small fee?! Egad. I suppose there really is nothing wrong with the computer itself but that seems a bit cheeky.

Anyway it's fixed. I took it to the shop - expecting a big argument about how there was nothing wrong with it, yadda yadda - and they were very helpful.

In the end the chap did something to make a 'root user' and then went into a folder from there where there was a link to the program Language Chooser (the same one which had run on the first occasion). He struggled a bit as it was all in English but got the job done in the end.

Glad I didn't have to reinstall everything! Thanks for your help anyway though chaps, you've been very kind.

Glad to hear it's fixed. Enjoy your new machine all in English.