Ghost Input Language/Keyboard Layout keeps reappearing in Windows (and how to remove it)

Operating Systems & Open Source Windows
1

Throughout the ages, I’ve been utterly annoyed by Windows and how it handles different Input Languages that are not the default OS-based one (e.g. Installing “English Canada - en-CA” vs “English - United States en-US”. Problem being in this case, “English - United States en-US” will re-appear after a while with no rhyme or reason.

Looking online I’ve found many solutions that only worked temporarily:

  • overriding the default user list through PowerShell’s Get/Set-WinUserLanguageList
  • adding and then removing the specific ghost entry through the Settings>Time & Language>Language & region options
  • Ignoring “Remote Keyboard” layouts (i.e. RDP and the like) through the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout DWORD registry key (value of 1 if you were wondering)

But these solutions were only temporary, and never really addressed the problem, the darned thing showed up again; specially after overnight idle time. However, I came across this post on a Microsoft forum that truly solved my woes. For posterity, the solution is to:

  • Browse in regedit to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language
  • Backup the sub-key pertaining to the Ghost Language that keeps appearing (just in case)
  • Deleting the Ghost Language sub-key
  • Log-out and profit

It’s been a week and I have not seen the darned thing again - which makes me happy!

As for a rant: for some reason the “Indexing Service” language entries in the registry keep pulling the fact that my computer should still be aware of this language, and keeps popping the ghost language into existence. I have no reason to understand that the Indexing Service should affect the Input Locale, Region and Keyboard Layout, but “something” keeps pulling it back into existence, specially considering that it was replaced with Windows Search (far inferior in my opinion, I miss the Windows XP search). I will try to find which component actually still reads values off these keys (again, Windows Search should be the current service, not the Indexing Service) and report a bug or something, but most likely it will never get resolved because Copilot+

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