Thank you Phillip.
The new Dell laptop was just delivered yesterday and I am not sure I can get an edition of Win 7. They seem to arbitrarily send out PCs with whatever language is on them. They included a disk for 8.1 which I don't want.
Would a new English edition install right over the French version? l may have one on a disk from another computer, but don't know if that would be compatible with the new laptop.
I am in the US. Following the directions given above re: the Japanese language PC, I changed everything as described, but was not given a list of languages.
I appreciate any help offered.