Unattend for Regional and Language Options in Vista

In previous posts, I have talked about the unattend mode of Regional and Language Options.

And in the most recent of those, I promised to talk about the changes in Vista. So that is what is happening in this very post!

WARNING: The stuff covered here will not work in Windows prior to Vista....

Some of the exciting features that were added may be small items, but a few of them have been requested for a very very long time:

• No more failures when you try to install more than nine keyboards at a time;
• You can now remove keyboard layouts -- keyboard layout list modification is no longer an "add only" feature;
• Individual settings you can see in the Regional and Language Options UI can now be changed (previously you could only change the user locale, not the settings in it) -- this is a much easier way to handle the SetLocaleInfo notification issue;
• Failures are written to the event log (previously they were only written to a \windows\regopt.log);
• You can choose whether you want to reset all of the override settings when you change the user locale (this is a feature you can use to reset the current user locale);
• Just as with the Vista UI, the ability to apply settings to either the default user account or to the system accounts exists;
• Support for the MUI feature of optional fallback language in addition to UI language.

One of the big new changes, to go along with all of the changes to Vista's unattend during setup story in general, is a move to an XML file format rather than the old text file format used previously....

A sample of the XML file that should work in Beta 2 of Vista (and probably most other builds, this functionality has been in there for a while now!) can be seen below:

<gs:GlobalizationServices xmlns:gs="urn:longhornGlobalizationUnattend">

    <!-- user list -->
    <gs:UserList>
        <gs:User UserID="Current" CopySettingsToDefaultUserAcct="true" CopySettingsToSystemAcct="true"/>
    </gs:UserList>

    <!-- GeoID -->
    <gs:LocationPreferences>
        <gs:GeoID Value="134"/>
    </gs:LocationPreferences>

    <!-- UI Language Prefernces -->
    <gs:MUILanguagePreferences>
        <gs:MUILanguage Value="cy-GB"/>
        <gs:MUIFallback Value="en-GB"/>
    </gs:MUILanguagePreferences>

    <!-- system locale -->
    <gs:SystemLocale Name="en-GB"/>

    <!-- input preferences -->
    <gs:InputPreferences>
        <gs:InputLanguageID Action="add" ID="0409:00000409"/>
        <gs:InputLanguageID Action="remove" ID="0409:00000409"/>
        <!--bs-Latn-BA--><gs:InputLanguageID Action="add" ID="141a:0000041a"/>
        <!--cy-GB--><gs:InputLanguageID Action="add" ID="0452:00000452"/>
        <!--cy-GB--><gs:InputLanguageID Action="add" ID="0809:00000809"/>
    </gs:InputPreferences>

    <!-- user locale -->
    <gs:UserLocale>
        <gs:Locale Name="en-US" SetAsCurrent="true" ResetAllSettings="false">
            <gs:Win32>
                <gs:iCalendarType>1</gs:iCalendarType>
                <gs:sList>...</gs:sList>
                <gs:sDecimal>;;</gs:sDecimal>
                <gs:sThousand>::</gs:sThousand>
                <gs:sGrouping>1</gs:sGrouping>
                <gs:iDigits>2</gs:iDigits>
                <gs:iNegNumber>2</gs:iNegNumber>
                <gs:sNegativeSign>(</gs:sNegativeSign>
                <gs:sPositiveSign>=</gs:sPositiveSign>
                <gs:sCurrency>kr</gs:sCurrency>
                <gs:sMonDecimalSep>,,</gs:sMonDecimalSep>
                <gs:sMonThousandSep>...</gs:sMonThousandSep>
                <gs:sMonGrouping>3</gs:sMonGrouping>
                <gs:iCurrDigits>1</gs:iCurrDigits>
                <gs:iCurrency>3</gs:iCurrency>
                <gs:iNegCurr>3</gs:iNegCurr>
                <gs:iLZero>0</gs:iLZero>
                <gs:sTimeFormat>:HH:m:s tt:</gs:sTimeFormat>
                <gs:s1159>a.m.</gs:s1159>
                <gs:s2359>p.m.</gs:s2359>
                <gs:sShortDate>d/M/yy</gs:sShortDate>
                <gs:sLongDate>dddd, MMMM yyyy</gs:sLongDate>
                <gs:iFirstDayOfWeek>6</gs:iFirstDayOfWeek>
                <gs:iFirstWeekOfYear>2</gs:iFirstWeekOfYear>
                <gs:sNativeDigits>0246813579</gs:sNativeDigits>
                <gs:iDigitSubstitution>1</gs:iDigitSubstitution>
                <gs:iMeasure>0</gs:iMeasure>
                <gs:iTwoDigitYearMax>2021</gs:iTwoDigitYearMax>
            </gs:Win32>
        </gs:Locale>
    </gs:UserLocale>

</gs:GlobalizationServices>

Note the use of comments in the XML. :-)

Now as was true in the old format, you only have to include the sections that you have changes in. However, at a minimum you must always have the following skeleton:

WARNING: Since I am a person who did not look at the event log when I could not get a file to work, you can save yourself a lot of time if you don't forget to add that "gs:UserList" tag!

Anticipating another question -- at present only the "Current" user is supported.

But don't worry. Think of this as another one of those instances where potential features in future versions are poking their heads out for people to gawk at! :-)

Now of course if anything changes between now and Vista shipping I will post again with whatever the updates are....

Anticpating another response -- the current plan of record is that the old text files will have to be converted to the new format, though of course that is a bigger issue than just Regional and Language Options -- it affects the unattend files for all of Vista. But I'll keep you updated on this issue if I hear anything else.

Now I am sure there are things I am forgetting, but I will make sure to add those in the future, too. :-)

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