Q. How do I install language packs into a Windows Imaging Format (WIM) file?

A. You add language packs to a WIM file by using Pkgmgr, the same way you would use the program to add an additional driver. You'll also need a Windows Automated Installation Kit installed. In the following example, I added a language pack to a Windows Server 2008 image.

John Savill

June 1, 2008

2 Min Read
Q. How do I install language packs into a Windows Imaging Format (WIM) file?

A. You add language packs to a WIM file by using Pkgmgr, the same way you would use the program to add an additional driver. You'll also need a Windows Automated Installation Kit installed. In the following example, I added a language pack to a Windows Server 2008 image.

                                                     Launch the Windows System Image Manager.If you don't already have a distribution share, create one.Go to Windows Server 2008 Multilingual User Interface Language Packs  to download the language packs you want to install.Copy the language packs into the Packages folder. When you're done, the Windows System Image Manager should look similar to Figure 1.As soon as the language packs are listed in the answer file, save the answer file to an XML file. It should look something like the following text:Next, mount a writable-mode image from the WIM file, using the following code as an example: D:temp>imagex /mountrw d:tempinstall.wim 1 d:tempmountThe output would be: ImageX Tool for Windows   Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved.      Mounting (RW): [d:tempinstall.wim, 1] ->   [d:tempmount]    Successfully mounted image (RW).Then, use Pkgmgr to import the language packs into the image. This step can take a long time depending on the number of languages you add. It took me 45 minutes to add Spanish and French on my computer.   D:temp>pkgmgr /o:"d:tempmount;d:tempmountwindows" /n:"d:tempunattend.xml" /l:d:tempunattendOnce the insertion is complete, Server 2008 will create a log file at the end of the unattend.txt file.You can use the Intlcfg command to set the WIM file default language (in this example, I used Spanish) and check the languages available using the following sample code as an example: intlcfg -image:d:tempmount -all:es-ES   ntlcfg -report -image:d:tempmountThen, you can close the image file, as the following example code shows: imagex /unmount /commit d:tempmountĀ 

About the Author(s)

Sign up for the ITPro Today newsletter
Stay on top of the IT universe with commentary, news analysis, how-to's, and tips delivered to your inbox daily.

You May Also Like