Microsoft KB Archive Search

Notice: This website is an unofficial Microsoft Knowledge Base (hereinafter KB) archive and is intended to provide a reliable access to deleted content from Microsoft KB. All KB articles are owned by Microsoft Corporation. Read full disclaimer for more details.

  1. Home
  2. IME defaults to English instead of expected localization after OOBE (Out of Box Experience) on Windows 8

IME defaults to English instead of expected localization after OOBE (Out of Box Experience) on Windows 8

View products that this article applies to.

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:
  • You have a PC running a localized version of Windows 8. For example, the PC has Windows 8 Simplified Chinese installed on it.
  • You complete OOBE (Out of Box Experience) using the Express settings option.

In this scenario, the Input Method Editor (IME) will default to English (EN-US) instead of the expected localization.

↑ Back to the top

Cause

This issue occurs because the system was not booted to OOBE prior to booting into Audit mode. As a result, the associated registry values were not populated.

↑ Back to the top

Resolution

You can use one of the two following methods to resolve this issue:

  • Allow the system to boot to the first prompt in OOBE and then use CTRL+Shift+F3 to boot to Audit mode.
  • If you are booting directly to Audit mode using an unattend file, use sysprep.exe with an unattend.xml file that configures IME to default to the desired localization. 

Below is a sample sysprep.exe command and unattend.xml:
 
sysprep.exe /oobe /reboot /unattend:<path to unattend.xml>

***** START sample unattend.xml *****
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
        <settings pass="oobeSystem">
             <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="AMD64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <InputLocale>0804:{81D4E9C9-1D3B-41BC-9E6C-4B40BF79E35E}{FA550B04-5AD7-411f-A5AC-CA038EC515D7}</InputLocale>
            <SystemLocale>zh-cn</SystemLocale>
            <UILanguage>zh-cn</UILanguage>
            <UserLocale>zh-cn</UserLocale>
             </component>

</settings>
                <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim:c:/oem/w8_x64/sources/install.wim#Windows 8 Consumer Preview" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />
        </unattend>
***** END sample unattend.xml *****

↑ Back to the top

Keywords: kb

↑ Back to the top

Article Info
Article ID : 2879365
Revision : 1
Created on : 1/7/2017
Published on : 10/24/2013
Exists online : False
Views : 306