Adding Chinese to a Notebook

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Rampage1329

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 5, 2006
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I have to add Chinese PRC and Chinese Taiwan to a whole lab of computers. The only way I know how to do this is by using the windows xp cd. Does anyone know if their is a way to dump those files from the XP Cd that are needed on to the common folder on a server so she can install them herself?
 
Rampage1329 said:
I don't think my employers will find that acceptable.
Click to expand...
Why not? It only takes a few hundred megs.

If you're talking about legality, there's absolutely nothing wrong with storing the contents of the Windows CD on the network. In fact, that's how one would *do* a network install of Windows.
 
Well they once had a policy about putting that on the network. I am going to try it for grins right now, but copying the i386 directory didn't work. It kept asking for the locations of certain files. When installing east asian language support it asks for the windows cd.
 
Rampage1329 said:
Well they once had a policy about putting that on the network. I am going to try it for grins right now, but copying the i386 directory didn't work. It kept asking for the locations of certain files. When installing east asian language support it asks for the windows cd.
Click to expand...

That's odd, all of the files needed are in that folder, make sure you are using an sp2 disc, better yet make a slipstreamed XP disc and dump that on the share.
 
Check the hard drives of your lab computers. Most installations in environments will have the CD copied to it somewhere. In fact, in all of my unattended builds, it would format the C: drive and then copy the i386 directory (all you need to install XP, btw) to C:\i386 and run setup from there. That way if XP ever needed any files (like your language files), it would automagically know where to get them.

If you want to move the CD to a network share (or the i386 directory), you'll need to make a change to the registry to get WinXP to recognize it and not prompt for files. Otherwise you can keep pointing it to the i386 directory you copied out on the network.

It was suggested above to slipstream an XPSP2 CD. I wouldn't advise that unless all of your machines are SP2. You really want to use the same version of the OS installation that is on your machine. So if all of your machines are SP2, it would work -- but if they're not, or you have a mix of RTM, SP1 and SP2, you might have to have multiple installation paths.

But really -- check the hard drive. I would expect to see the i386 directory on it somewhere. Sometimes it's called the self-healing directory, or someone old-school might have tossed it into \Windows\Options...
 
I think I need to make that registry change you are talking about. Since it explicitly looks for the cd. All of the computers should have at least service pack 2 since they are all the same model on a wireless notebook cart. If I made that registry change, I'm afraid I would have no place to document it for the next guy, and the next guy might not know how to do other repairs.
 
Like I said, it's pretty standard to put the operating system files on the machine so it can access them as it needs them. So here's what I would do.

1. Copy the i386 directory from the CD to each machine. Doesn't matter where you put it. It's often put in C:\i386.

2. On each of the machine, change the registry to point to the windows CD in this path.
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
SourcePath = "C:\i386"

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
SourcePath = "C:\i386"

Of course, change C:\i386 to whatever path you want XP to pull the media from. I really don't know if a UNC will work, but it could be worth a try. You might also need to reboot, I'm not sure as it's been a loooong time since I actually modified that value.

good luck!
 
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