Windows 10 – Windows Display Languages cause automatic keyboards adding

keyboardkeyboard-layoutlanguagewindowswindows 10

I have troubles with Windows 10 keyboard settings. I wish to keep the only two languages and keyboards:

English (United States) – US Keyboard
Czech – Czech Keyboard

However, I see the following settings. The list of preferred languages is complete and there appear only 2 languages – these I want:

However, upon restarting, the keyboard is somehow set to 4 keyboards, which is annoying and I want to remove both United Kingdom-based keyboards:

I tried to list all the languages in the PowerShell using the command:

Get-WinUserLanguageList

Giving me the following output where only the wanted languages appear correclty:

LanguageTag     : en-US
Autonym         : English (United States)
EnglishName     : English
LocalizedName   : English (United States)
ScriptName      : Latin script
InputMethodTips : {0409:00000409}
Spellchecking   : True
Handwriting     : False

LanguageTag     : cs
Autonym         : čeština
EnglishName     : Czech
LocalizedName   : Czech
ScriptName      : Latin script
InputMethodTips : {0405:00000405}
Spellchecking   : True
Handwriting     : False

However, upon restarting, the United Kingdom variations of the both English and Czech are somehow imported (sometimes one of them).

I have also tried to remove the content of the following Registry folder with no luck:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload

How can I fix this issue? My only goal is to remove all languages and keyboards related to the United Kingdom at all.

My Windows version is:

Edition: Windows 10
Version: ~~1803~~ 1903
Installed on ~~25/07/18~~ 20/09/19
OS build: ~~17134.885~~ 18362.356

Update 28/09/19: The recent Windows Update didn't fix the problem.

Best Answer

This is most likely due to synchronized settings.

It could be that your computer is syncing these settings from elsewhere. Make sure you turn off the syncing behaviour before you troubleshoot any further:

>Settings > Accounts > Sync your settings > Language Preferences (OFF)

or: There an issue reported about this for 1803, which does not seem to have been resolved. It is a known issue:

Update: This should be resolved for version 2004

If English (United Kingdom) is the current Windows display language, and you then add for instance English (India) to the Preferred languages list, afterwards neither English (United Kingdom) nor English (India) can be removed from the Preferred languages list.

or:

Someone has suggested that Razer's Synapse software keeps adding the random layouts. Disabling it on startup fixes all these issues. This could be a problem for some who comes here looking for a solution.

or:

It could also be related to this question here on superuser.

If you still see the issue, there are a few proposed solutions to this problem:

1 use the old language preferences:

WIN + R then type shell:::{BF782CC9-5A52-4A17-806C-2A894FFEEAC5} and remove English(United Kingdom) from there.

2 Set en-US as only user language (found here):

Open Powershell with Administrative rights and type the following one by one:

New-WinUserLanguageList en-US

Set-WinUserLanguageList en-US

You will be greeted with:

Confirm
Continue with this operation?
[Y] Yes  [N] No  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):

Press Y to confirm. Reboot. And install the wanted extra languages again.

3 Yet another way:

From the Start menu, search for powershell.
Right-click Windows Powershell in the search results and choose Run as administrator.
Type or copy/paste the following command at the command prompt, and then press Enter.

`Get-WinUserLanguageList`

After typing this command, make note of the “LanguageTag” listed for the language you wish to remove, as you will need it in the next step.

Type or copy/paste each of the following commands at the command prompt, and then press Enter. In the following commands, instead of typing , replace it with the language tag you wish to remove, such as en-in for English (India).

$LangList = Get-WinUserLanguageList
$MarkedLang = $LangList | where LanguageTag -eq "<languagecode>"
$LangList.Remove($MarkedLang)

Set-WinUserLanguageList $LangList -Force

You can also try this tutorial from windows central

You can read more about windows language packs here

Related Solutions

Windows – Why does Windows 7 always automatically change the input or keyboard language

Yet, I've not found out if it is possible to change the default input language via a shortcut or if it's possible to disable the regular fall back to the default input language when opening a new program, but I've found an alternative!

Googling the problem, I came across the following article written by Androgen Belkin: http://www.script-coding.info/AutoHotkey/AhkRussianEng.html

He explains that Russians always have a similar problem with their keyboards concerning the Russian and English language. Thus, he created a script that checks and switches on user input, if necessary, the default input language when Windows starts. The script can be found on the above link at the very bottom and has been written for AutoHotKey, a free keyboard macro program. Luckily, I am a devoted AutoHotKey user myself.

Instead of Russian and English, I adapted the script to check for the German and English default input language. It works errorless and is very handy because now I can set my default input language with ease :)

Furthermore, AutoHotKey supports compiling scripts into single executables. I don't want to withhold my script from everybody to whom it is as useful as to me.

Switching default input language [Germany (German) <> English (United States)]: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A8HKEV4A

Filename: Switching_default_input_language_DE-EN.zip

Contents: (1) Switching_default_input_language.ahk (AutoHotKey script; for editing or re-compiling the script), (2) Switching_default_input_language.exe (stand-alone executable)

Have fun! :)

Windows – How to prevent Windows 10 from automatically adding keyboard layouts (i.e. US keyboard)

To fix this issue, delete the Preload registry folder and sign out or restart the computer:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload

This folder seems to be some legacy remnant that contains non-user-specified keyboard layouts to be added to the list of languages when the user signs in. While the fix itself works through restarts, at time of writing there's things that bring back that pesky folder, here's a few that I bumped into personally:

Remote desktop to a computer with US layout
Using the same Microsoft account on another PC that still has this issue

Whenever the problem comes back, that registry folder needs to be deleted again.

Edit 2: Thanks to @Lu55's suggestion, here's a handy one-liner to use on a command prompt with admin privileges:

reg delete "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload" /f

Edit: I have created a RemovePreload.reg text file with the following content, this way this fix can easily be re-applied every time without navigating the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload]

To use this, save it in a text file and change the extension from .txt to .reg. Then whenever it comes back, you can just double click it and restart or sign out.