Cant find language packs?

[iShree]

My brother bought a new laptop that came with Vista pre-installed but in Chinese language. As we don’t understand Chinese, I was trying to install English Vista but installation gets failed every time with a very large error message as follows:

“A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
Windows did not find any installed, licensed language packs for the system default UI language.

If this is the first time you have seen this stop error screen, restart your computer, if this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup options, and then select Safe Mode.”

I’m not able to understand what is causing this problem. Is there something like we cannot install another language ? Does license impose restrictions? Please help. I’m not able to use this laptop because of Chinese language. Thank you in advance.

[Jasonholt]

As the Vista came pre-installed, it is an OEM product and OEM use to have many limitations. Anyways, I think you can install your English version of Vista by completely wiping out the hard drive. Yeah, Clean format should work.

[Avium]

hi

actually i have exactly the same problem as intso.
bought new vaio in shanghai with chinese vista installed on it. bought an original eng vista so i can use my new beauty. the installation went well, i formatted the hard drive, installed the eng vista home edition, but as the installation finished and win should log in i get the bluescreen with the "Windows did not find any installed, licensed language packs for the system default UI language." error message stucked in an endless bluescreen-restart loop until i didnt disabled the automatic restart upon error. the thing is, as i wrote that i did totally clean install, but vaio's got a lil trick, from the hard drive ~15gigs is separated and invisible for the built in win install, so you dont get an easily loseable install dvd (on other hand if the hd dies in your notebook then you can get it working again in a sony service if you want your original win back with all the drivers needed). so this hidden chinese partition might be the reason why there is a language pack "misunderstanding". still, i didnt find any solution to this, now i put an xp on the note to at least use it, but would really appriciate some help with this. i didnt buy an original vista to keep it on the shelf.

thanks in advance
avi

[Raveex]

Hi.

I find solution!

At installation do not enter your OEM a key and do not activate system with it.

Why? It is not hard to guess, that there is a conflict of key country language and language of system.

Have Fun! Good luck!

[okonomiyaki3000]

Can anyone tell me why this bs is still an issue on Windows? Is there any good reason why MS can't just include all languages and let you choose which one you want to use like Apple does? Or at least, provide the language packs as free downloads? They're useless without a licensed copy of the OS anyway, why not let people download them?

[okonomiyaki3000]

Too bad it's not an issue. Because issues sometimes get... you know... resolved. Looks like this mess is just how things are.

Why should I upgrade to Ultimate just so I can use my friggin PC in a language I understand? How am I even supposed to navigate "Anytime Upgrade" when I can't read a single thing on the screen?

Anyway, I found a solution in some application called Vistalizator which will install language packs on the regular home version of Winblows (why so many different versions anyway?). The down side is, switching languages is a system wide setting, and requires a restart. So, no chance of setting a different language for each user. Funny how this never comes up in those stupid side-by-side comparisons of Mac vs Win but they always compare useless stuff like installation procedure. Fact is, Mac completely smashes Windows when it comes to multilingualism.

One more thing. Everyone here is privy to MS's "business reasons" for not including such basic functionality in their OS: they expect you to give them more money.