Who has the experience to instruct me...language change in Vista Home!

General Topics
1

Hi forum friends,

In this large community there must be individuals whose daily routine it is to repair and re-install computers. I had an accident when installing an acer laptop for my wife choosing the wrong installation language as French, and because of it being Vista Home, you get only one chance. I now bought three installation CDs from Acer (*65 euro) for that particular laptop - 3 CD’s to install it in Dutch. When I inserted the first of the three CD’s it ran (but did not install) and I could change some issues in Configuration, install Dutch as the main language, install USA-Dutch keyboard outlay, etc. But that does not do it all, for instance with Windows Mail I cannot choose other spell checking but in the languages French, Spanish and German, and I want Dutch, changed to Amsterdam time as well, that particular change went fine.
How do I proceed with these OEM installation CD’s?
Can I change all the settings keeping the original configuration (I have made a copy of Outlook - archive on USB - and all pictures on that machine are copied there) - but I rather like to repait what I need from the original installation CD (what to use there) then having to go to a total recall - and if there is no other way to perform this - how to start the CD’s re-installing? Can someone with daily experience here give me some instructions, it is not my daily practice?

polonus

2

Hi Polunus…

Well, I do when I get the work, rarely is it every day. ;D

To be honest, however, I’ve never dealt with this issue and I suspect that you will need to reinstall from scratch to get it exactly how you want it, unless someone else here knows how to do what you’re asking. :frowning:

What were the options listed when you inserted the first CD? Do you get the screens listed here? If so (and if you choose to reinstall from scratch,) when you get to the section on partitions, be sure to delete the active partition (the one Windows works from) create a new partition and format it. :slight_smile:

God bless :slight_smile:

3

Hi ardvark,

Slowly getting there, allas I find that I have no automatic Vista updates anymore, how can I reinstall that.
When I click from start in the option I get nothing. What happened there? For the remainder when I start Dutch edition, when I close down also. Spell checker was taken out of the 2007 mail program because of new regulation, there I have to go to another mail program with Dutch spell-checker included,

polonus

4

Hi,

the thing is that you’re dealing with “acer” OEM CDs, and I don’t know how they behave. You had the language choice because you acquired them, and these are not the same that what you get when backing up the recovery partition >>> no language choice.
Too bad you already spent the money, while if you had acquired a Seven Ultimate OEM (not an Acer OEM, just an MS OEM DVD), once installed you can change languages on the fly. But again, that’s restricted to the Ultimate edition and that’s more money than what you spent. This said you definitely should have acquired an MS OEM DVD of Vista/home, with pre-defined language ;)…you wouldn’t have experienced such issues.

5

Salut à tous ,la version 5 elle super de super, suis fan de Avast pour dire mais la bravo à Avast pour cette version qui et pour moi, et la meilleure de tous la page de présentation avec ces couleurs aussi on y voit claire les options dans la version gratuit le top ,ai fait plusieurs test et formidable il à une vitesse de détection très rapide ,les réglages complet et facile à comprendre voila il quitte plus la machine pour des années trop bon ,encore une fois merci à Avast pour cette super version 5 gratuite.Cordialement 8)

6

polonus, Is there a restore Partition? That is a way to take it back to the way it was when it came out of the box? If you can do that, it might give you the option to choose your language.

Check in programs for System Recovery.

7

I think that on Acer computers if you hit F10 when it boots you will get to the restore Partition

found this:
http://support-web.acer-euro.com/app/csd/etkdb.nsf/4b7a708d8dbc41cdc1256bd6003c0165/00ca4a5198139c75c1257284004fce3c?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,eRecovery

8

Yeah, reinstall is about the only way to do it, besides changing the language in the control panel.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-the-display-language

That only works for programs that support Unicode.

The recovery partition may work as suggested by Pondus, if you haven’t deleted it or installed windows over top of it.

Good luck!

9

I think he deleted it and didn’t have backup DVDs, otherwise he wouldn’t have acquired new CDs…

10

Hi Logos and others,

This excercise on my wife’s Acer laptop is becoming “a real pain in the ‘proverbial’ parts”.
Tried to recover from the “cannot automatically update” Vista error message.
Tried to recover with two specific tools. A disaster folks, just in my case, it was…

Had to make the DWORD-value NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers with a value 1 in the registry HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU (has to be done manually in WindowsUpdate and AU when tey are not present or through a batch file). I download this tool:
http://www.schoonepc.nl/nieuwsbrief/wufixvista11.zip
and have run it with full admin rights, again to no avail. This is tool has not been presented yet by MS because it is still under development.

Finally I downloaded and ran the repair tool System Update Readiness for Windows Vista (download: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821/). This tool has been developed to correct certain inconsistencies causing software installs and updates not to work (eror code involved are 0x80070002, 0x8007000D, 0x800F081F, 0x80073712, 0x800736CC, 0x800705B9, 0x80070246, 0x8007370D, 0x8007370B, 0x8007370A, 0x80070057, 0x800B0100, 0x80092003, 0x800B0101 en 0x8007371B).
And I got one of those, could not install but could not find the specific mui file. Have to do this again because as a stand-alone tool working it can take some time.

Now I wonder what could have gone wrong by trying to change from teh French installation version to the Dutch one, already in the first install certain parts of the Configuration do not come up , just an empty flash an then nothing. How did it become corrupted. Anyone any idea?

Now I am going back to trying this:
Click on the Start Button go to all programs click once.
Find the accessories folder and click to open it.

Step
2
Find the Icon for the Dos window and click it. You should see the window open at the C:\user[your name]. From here you will need to go to the root directory. Type in cd c:. This will bring you to the root directory at the c prompt which is c:\

Step
3
Once at the c:\ type sfc/scannow and hit enter. You will see where it says verifying files and a number with a % sign behind it. Once the scan is finished it will give you a message that tells you if the system had any corrupted files and whether or it could be repaired. If it could not repair all files you should restart your system and go to Microsoft support to find the answer as to how to repair all files. It could even require an installation of the system files.

Then try out the instructions here:
http://www.winvistatips.com/repair-corrupt-vista-files-t133839.html

Well Windows Works is still completely in French, keyboard, language settings are now Dutch, time is Amsterdam time, also MS Mail has one item in French, so there is till soem work to do.
Vista is so unfriendly in this respects, if I want to download updated from the Internet, I am redirected to the inbuilt installer via start update and there I click in vain, also other parts of the Configuration Console corrupted.
I report later, I understand why W7 came so soon to replace this OS. I long for the days you had a full
MS-Dos hanging under the OS to work what you wanted to do. Wish me luck, folks,

polonus

11

Hi Polonus…

Perhaps purchasing and installing Windows 7 could be an option. Just be sure to wipe all the partitions and install it from scratch. :wink:

God bless :slight_smile:

12

+1

13
  • 666 ;D

OK, more seriously, installing Win7 also depends on the hardware, whether there’s enough RAM etc…well if Vista run fine, Seven should too, it’s in fact less resource demanding than Vista (from what I read, never compared myself on the same machine).

14
+ 666
;D ;D ;D
OK, more seriously, installing Win7 also depends on the hardware, whether there's enough RAM etc...well if Vista run fine, Seven should too, it's in fact less resource demanding than Vista (from what I read, never compared myself on the same machine).
Hands on: Running Windows 7 on a netbook http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9132041/Hands_on_Running_Windows_7_on_a_netbook
15

yeah OK but:

Computerworld - Microsoft made headlines recently when The Wall Street Journal reported that the company planned to equip netbooks with the [b]Starter edition[/b] of Windows 7, a semi-crippled version that only lets users run up to three applications at a time

also, we’ve seen the minimum requirements indicated by MS is pure bs, remember the Vista ready story, they got sued by consumers for that :smiley: For instance they indicate a minimum of 1GB of physical memory, which is absolute non-sense. A more realistic number for Seven is not below 2GB.

16

Hi Logos,

Will run the Win7 validator, think it can be done, just have to find a a reasonably priced upgrade to Win7.
But before I do that, I gonna venture out on this mission to learn a few things during the process.
I always learned most from previous mistakes, when I had my old Packard Bell I had the most vicious virus that killed the OS, and that made my swear to be a malware fighter, and I became one eventually, well at least I hope some folks benefited from my “rants” on these here webforums from time to time there is some valuable info mixed in.
This is how it works, folks. But it cannot be performed that easily as during the old days, where users could resource hack, work old MS-Dos, repair on the fly, develop unofficial service packs for Win98 SE (Turkish engineer developed it with full USB 2.0 support).

Everybody loathed Windows ME, my wife loved it and clicked and “kicked” it for years and years and years and that old “tractor” machine never gave up on her and is still alive, and performed all her Multi Media tasks of the time for years on end (only have to serve it up with a Network card, because it did not have one to hang it up to the peer to peer home network linksys). So the lousiest MS OS was my best experience, well also because of the avast home protection over all this years (thanks avast folks, thanks a bunch for making our life so much easier!).
Have it in the attic and it can still be served up or work as a Linux fw. In the old days people had hoovers that hoovered for a lifetime and I had a washing machine that washed my washing for 14 years after it had been with my mum’s for years. Now we have shaving machines that go blunt after three months time, what is the world coming to?

pol

17

Hi Polonus…

I think we know the answer to that question… :wink:

God bless :slight_smile:

18

Hi folks,

The next step was I pushed the windows button, typed cmd, pushed Ctr + Shft+ Enter, Pushed alt + C in the confirmation window and then had the admin console (also handy if there is no mouse available)
Then I first performed a sfc/verifyonly scan abd that brought "integrity errors found - details in CBS.Log Windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log"…
Then I did a sfc/scannow and that brought “damaged files found, not all files could be repaired - details also in CBS.log”…

How can I view the contents of that log (it might be used by another process), and how then to proceed on?

polonus

19

Hi Polonus,

are you having fun fighting hard to repair a broken Windows install? no offense, that’s your choice. I would never do that. I’d go for a complete reinstall of the OS. Must also unfortunately depend on the install media that you have that doesn’t allow much. OK in Seven you can create a Windows repair disk, useful for those who got their systems with Windows pre-installed, because hey they don’t have a regular Windows DVD. The CDs you got from Acer don’t offer this either. So, I’m not sure if you can do that from Vista, if yes it’s in the “backup” interface. If you don’t find it, you can get an equivalent there:
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/download-windows-vista-x64-recovery-disc/
(there’s a 32 bit version too on that page)

ps: careful with the ISOs for Vista there, they might not be appropriate for SP2.