VBScript Date and Time Functions May not be Formatted Properly in Non-English (US) Locales

Calling VBScript-based date or time related functions from Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) on non-English (US) localizations of Microsoft Windows 2000, may return unexpected results when a user logs in interactively at the Internet Information Services (IIS) server.

VBScript, the default scripting language used by ASP, formats date and time values based on the settings specified by the interactive user. When there is no user logged in interactively (at the console), the system defaults that were specified during setup are used. However, when a user logs in interactively, that user's locale (regional) settings are used for all VBScript date and time formatting on the server. NOTE: This problem is the result of a design implementation in VBScript. Although IIS 5.0 is listed in the "Applies To" section, the problem will manifest in any service/application that attempts to use VBScript Date/Time formatting functions when a user is not logged in interactively (ie. IIS4, IIS3, W, H, etc.).

To work around this behavior, you can use any of following workarounds:

• Set the Session.LCID value for the locale you want in the Application_OnStart or Session_OnStart functions of the Global.asa file.
  For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  229690  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229690/EN-US/ ) HOWTO: Set the ASP Locale ID Per the Browser's Language Settings
• If you are using VBScript, call the SetLocale function from any page that uses date or time functions.
  For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  232158  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/232158/EN-US/ ) HOWTO: Use GetLocale() and SetLocale() in VBScript
• If you are using VBScript, manually format all date and time functions by using the concatenations of the Datepart function such as Day, Month and Year.
  
  
• Use JScript (http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/jscript/techinfo/jsdocs.htm) as the scripting language, which does not rely on the interactive user's settings for date and time formatting, because a complete date is not returned (date parts are returned from methods such as GetDate, GetMonth, and GetFullYear).
  
  
• Do not log in to the server interactively (at the console). Use Terminal Services to log into the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.
  
  NOTE: This workaround is not available for Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional.
  
  
• Setting the following value in the registry forces IIS 5.0 to pull the default system format for the Date and Time functions, but is not recommended for locales that use non-English character sets:
  
  
  HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International\Locale = 00000409
  WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
  

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Because the presence of an interactive user can affect the Locale ID, and thus the formatting of date, time, and currency values, Microsoft recommends that you explicitly set the Locale ID by using the Session.LCID property in the Global.asa for your Web application.

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: