It may not be the XP, but rather, the Word.

Check to see what Word has for default numeric formatting. You can also force the formatting that you want by toggling the mail merge field in Word. Not also, you can get different results from two different users on the same machine doing the same thing. I have a mail merge word doc that displays the date using French month but only for one user on one machine. If that user accesses that same word doc from another machine or if a different user accesses that doc from the same machine, the result is an English spelling of the date - still working on this one though.

Ken