What's the difference between running a localized version of Windows and running Windows with that user interface language?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/12/17 10:16 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/12/17/6784443.aspx

A very common question I get (and which I have received several times by different people over the last few weeks via the Contact link -- from Deborah, Kurt, and Phil!) is:

What's the difference between running a localized version of Windows and running Windows with that user interface language?

I talked a bit about a similar question in If you had gotten there first, you might have staked your claim too! a few months ago, where I talked about the many issues inherent in answering:

What's the difference between running a localized version of Vista and running Vista with that user interface language?

but asking the broader question (not specific to Vista) is really due to three potential causes:

• You may not have looked to see if I answered the question already (understandable since few people do)
• You may have looked but not found it (understandable since the built-in search kind of sucks  little bit)
• You may have looked, found it, but decided that since the post claimed such a Vista focus that the answer must be different for other platforms (understandable since it is based on a reasonable assumption!)

So, having no excuse whereby I could call the question unreasonable crap unworthy of coverage here and with the reality of a bunch of people recently asking me a question that at least six butt-loads of people have asked previously, I figured I should answer the broader question. :-)

Believe it or not, the answer is almost identical, but moreso!

All of the previous versions that also include MUI have that same notion of there being a specific advantage to getting there first.

Now prior to Vista, that first language (in the case of MUI) usually¹ had to be English. And the underlying resource storage was not as completely modularized as it is in Vista, since Vista is the first release where English is just another language. But the behavior was essentially the same, with the first language on the box controlling a great deal of the future destiny of the particular installation of Windows (from file paths to account names and so on).

And the bulk of the issues I brought up also still apply related to marketization issues, potential content inconsistencies in help which tends to assume that the language of help itself is that initial install language (even when it isn't), and so on. So that topic is still very relevant.

So what changed?

Well, the underlying process by Windows is built is where the most changes happened, as what could be best thought of as the "hack of an MUI build" became the feature of the essential way that Windows is built. Which is crucially important to the Windows team inside of Microsoft, but not so much to people outside (other than IHVs trying to get their drivers in the box!).

But the answer to the original question is that first language installed has special privileges, everybody else is equally slightly less important but otherwise identical.

1 - In the case of some languages, starting in XP, the base language was sometimes allowed to be something else (discussed in Microsoft, you giving us some LIP?)

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# Mihai on 17 Dec 2007 12:38 PM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 17 Dec 2007 12:46 PM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 17 Dec 2007 12:48 PM:

# Peter Karlsson on 18 Dec 2007 8:19 AM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 18 Dec 2007 10:31 AM:

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