Good news!
Anyone who knows better doesn't use IE anyway. Install Firefox or Chrome, and you'll be good to go.
As for running in to this before - yes I have. Same deal, I was running Ultimate and had a Chinese login for my wife, and English one for myself. It's a long time ago now though, so I'm not sure how I fixed it. I think similar to what you are trying I had to remove any indication of Chinese on the PC, then it eventually worked.