Does anyone know how to automate adding new languages to Windows 10?
I have a script that can automate switching the locale settings of a TestBot VM. It can even automatically create the live snapshots that the TestBot needs [1].
But before it can do its magic it needs the requested locale to be installed. Now I'd like it to be able to automate installing the required locale too, particularly on Windows 10. When I did it manually I noticed that Windows 10 asked me a bunch of customization questions on reboot. Those would obviously have to be skipped too.
Note that in this scenarion Windows is already installed and running. So the 'Windows unattended install' tools may or may not be useful.
[1] https://source.winehq.org/git/tools.git/blob/HEAD:/testbot/scripts/SetWinLoc...
On Fri, 2 Aug 2019, Francois Gouget wrote:
Does anyone know how to automate adding new languages to Windows 10?
I looked into this but I did not find anything that looks like it could work.
As a reminder the manual way involves going to Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> Add a language. Pick a language, scroll down to select a language, click Next and Install. Rinse repeat, one language at a time.
What I found:
* lpksetup Language packs can be installed with lpksetup.exe but this requires downloading the language pack files beforehand. I could download them and use TestAgent to send them to the VM. But: - These language packs are specific to each Windows version so I would need to repeat that whenever there's a new Windows version. - It seems the normal way to access these language packs is by downloading the "Language Pack ISO" but the access to this seems to be restricted to "OEMs and System Builders". - There are URLs floating around but they are hard to find, are only for old versions, and point to 404s so it's not even possible to test this approach.
* Dism /Online /Add-Package Dism is normally used to modify Windows installation disk images to integrate additional features: drivers, software, language packs, etc. That functionality is useless to me since I need to modify a live Windows installation.
Luckily the /Online option makes it possible to do just that. But:
- The command takes the form of "Dism /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath=..." where PackagePath specifies the path to the language pack file(s). So as for lpksetup this requires finding a way to download the language pack first.
* Dism /Online /Set-AllIntl "Dism /Set-AllIntl" is a related Dism command that sets the language settings. I was hoping it would also download and install the required components. But no such dice. In fact it does not even work on already installed languages (use "Dism /Online /Get-Intl" to get the list) because /Set-AllIntl is incompatible with the /Online option.
* Control intl.cpl This is the command I use to configure which language to use. You'd think that there would also be some option to install the language but if so I have not found it. I also doubt it's possible in the intl.cpl is an old "Control Panel" component whereas the only place to install the languages is in the new "Windows settings" app.
* AutoHotKey Seems like this would be a somewhat complex and fragile solution. I'm worried it would be hard to pick the right entry in the language drop-down list. I'm also wary of side-effects it could have on the test environment.
I think that sums up what I found. So again if someone knows how to do this...
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Francois Gouget