Building new Windows XP images is still a requirement for many IT professionals. Many company s haven’t gone to Windows 7 and others are building MED-V Clients. Now, getting the region settings perfect in MDT can be frustrating and waste so much time.
I’ve seen this question posted in the forums so many times now, I just have to blog about it. I’ve seen people just give up and decide to use workarounds like reg hacks or custom scripts etc. After much testing here are my settings using MDT 2010:
In the CustomSettings.ini add:
InputLocale=0809:00000809
In the Unattend.txt Modify these 3 lines:
Keyboardlayout = "United Kingdom" Language = 0809 ; language locale to be installed LanguageGroup = 2 ; Language Group to be installed
That’s it! Your region settings will look like this:
For those still interested (or are not in the UK), I spent 2 days testing various scenarios and here’s what I learned(some of you have probably learned this years ago, I certainly should have).
KeyboardLocale setting is only for Windows 7/Vista/2008
InputLocale=0809:00000809 is the correct setting for Windows XP
UserLocale=en-GB had no effect on Windows XP deployments during my tests
SystemLocale=0809:00000809 XP setting (in MDT 2010) that gets most of it done
By only using MDT though I could only get the Keyboard set and not remove the US so it looked like this:
Adding Keyboardlayout = “United Kingdom” to the unattend .txt will set the UK region from the outset so you don’t end up with the US Keyboard included.
I also couldn’t get the location set until I added both Language = 0809 and
LanguageGroup = 2 to the Unattend.txt.
When you see 0809:00000809 this represents locale_ID:keyboard layout ID and there’s a list of codes here:
Locale IDs
National Language Support (NLS) API Reference
LanguageGroup ID’s
In the [Windows XP Professional SP3 CD]\SUPPORT\TOOLS\DEPLOY.CAB there’s a help file called ref.chm which documents the unattend.txt settings and shows the syntax for the region codes. Also, I found this useful from Microsoft’s website KB 289125:
Unattend.txt Settings
// The following settings are relevant for an Unattend.txt file when you configure Windows MultiLanguage version-related settings during an unattended installation:
Language = locale ID
LanguageGroup = language group ID, language group ID
SystemLocale = locale ID
UserLocale = locale ID
InputLocale = locale ID:keyboard layout ID, locale ID:keyboard layout ID
UserLocale_DefaultUser = locale ID
InputLocale_DefaultUser = locale ID:keyboard layout ID
Two settings are ignored in
Unattend.txt and Sysprep.inf, and are specific to computers that have the MultiLingual User Interface Packs installed. You can use these settings only by invoking the Regional and Language Options control panel applet in an unattended fashion:
IDMUILanguage_DefaultUser = language ID
Now, some commands can only be used in HEX and others in text. To explain this I created a table based on what I found in the manuals.
I’ve posted links for the region codes above to help with other country’s. Hopefully now, I’ll never see this question posted in the forums again or at least not so many reg hacks, custom scripts or workarounds..
Scriptimus Ex Machina 
Thank You Andrew. the info shared in this blog is really helpful in knowing few unattended file settings. Do you have any info about Task sequence integration with roles. If so, can you please share that info?
Regards,
Sugu
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Andrew,
Great Effort on this. There are some links on the Internet to accomplish this however I like the way it has been explained.
I might have a few lines to add which I would email you over the weekend.
regards,
Vik Singh
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Thanks Vik,
I’ll keep an eye out for it. I’m keen to hear your thoughts.
Andrew
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Hello Andrew,
I did exactly what you said, but sadly it didn’t work for me on a Sysprepped/Captured XP SP3.
Must the installation to be Sysprepped, in a certain state for this to work?
“InputLocale=0809:00000809
In the Unattend.txt Modify these 3 lines:
Keyboardlayout = “United Kingdom”
Language = 0809 ; language locale to be installed
LanguageGroup = 2 ; Language Group to be installed
Kind regards,
Edwin Bruining
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Hi Edwin,
This post relates to new builds. Your custom image has its settings that were configured at original deployment time.
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Hello Andrew,
Thanks for your reply.
After a new test. Your Settings do work in een unattended XP installation with MDT 2010.
I understand the locale settings are in the captured image.
Can you hint 😉 how to do/manage/apply alternative (different) locale settings to the XP Sp3 wim image for deploy?
For instance can this be done in a script in the tasksequence or is there a better way?
Kind regards,
Edwin
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Hi Andrew,
How could we do if you have different countries?
Is there a way to have diffrent layouts in the same CustomSettings.ini and Unattend.txt?
And in the TS point to the diffrent langugage choises depending on a collection variable or something like that?
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I believe you can append this with multiple regions although I have not tried this myself.
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Cheers, that saved me some bother was getting annoyed with changing the language after install. This works a treat!
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