country select dropdown missing

When trying to dial up with my son's computer a prompt window appears informing that a country has not been selected. There is no dropdown selection in the window, just empty, computer freezes, must ctrl alt del etc.
However, when checking protocols in the created connection all information including country are present and correct. Even though the connection properties have United States by default, Windows does not recognize it.
I tried hyper terminal with the same results.

 

In the control panel, there is a place for selecting that stuff. In XP it is called "Regional and Language Options ". I forget what it is called in 98. I'm sure you can find it.