Deploying XP with different languages can sometimes be a real challenge. Not that it’s that difficult to make the different settings in sysprep.inf or unattend.txt but you still need to make sure the correct files are present during installation, and depending on how you do this, a number of things can go wrong.

First let me point out that, this guide assumes that we are working with BDD/MDT or SCCM and therefore do not have the ability to manipulate the behavior of winnt32.exe (the executable used to start the Windows XP installation) by adding different command switches.

Normally we would add the /copysource:lang command in order to copy all language files from the XP source to %WINDIR%\LANG because the [RegionalSettings] section otherwise would not work for languages Groups other than 1 and 2 (Europe and US).

Building our reference/master image using BDD, MDT or SCCM we have to do this either trough the sysprep setting InstallFilesPath or manually before we run sysprep.

The Manual Way:

1. Create a Build Task Sequence, but do not do an automatic capture. This will enable us to customize the build before capturing.

2. Go to <control panel><Regional and Language options><Language tab><Supplemental language support> and check both boxes. Windows will now ask for a number of files which are all placed in system32 or system32\lang in the WindowsXP source. 

3. Now that all the language files have been added to the build, changes have to made to sysprep.inf. this will of cause be done by the TS during deployment. The settings that must be set is:

[RegionalSettings]
LanguageGroup=1,2,7	Language ID for Europe, United State and Japan
SystemLocale = 0409	Default codapage for the system (should be changed only for asian languages.
UserLocale = 0406	Danish, Time, date, currency e.t.c
InputLocale = 0406:00000406	Danish keyboard
UserLocale_DefaultUser = 0406:00000406	Optional, only if more UserLocals are defined
InputLocale_DefaultUser = 0406:00000406	Optional, only if more InpotLocals are defined
[GuiUnattended]
OEMSkipRegional=1	skips asking for input during minisetup

 

The automated way

1. The language files must be placed in a folder in the image (f.eks. C:\sysprep\LANG ). The files needed in the LANG folder are:

i386\*.nl?

i386\kbd*.dl?
i386\*.fo?
i386\agt*.dl?
i386\agt*.hl?
i386\conime.ex?
i386\wbcache.*
i386\noise.*
i386\wbdbase.*
i386\infosoft.dl?
i386\f3ahvoas.dl?
i386\sylfaen.tt_
i386\c_is*.dl_
i386\\Lang\*.*

2. Changes necessary to sysprep.inf are:

None of the sysprep changes have to be present during actual syspreping (running the sysprep.exe)  which means the LANG folder can be added to an already captured image using ImageX, and sysprep.inf entries can be added during deployment…