Changing Display Language on Windows 7 Home and Professional Editions

I bought a laptop for other family members yesterday, it comes with Windows 7 Home Premium. I needed to change the display language from English to Chinese because the main user of this laptop does not speak English.

I thought it was a no brainer as I’ve done it before, all I had to do was to load another language pack in “Regional and Language” in Control Panel. However, I was wrong. apparently this function is available in Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions.

I didn’t really want to use Windows Anytime Upgrade to upgrade it to Ultimate just so I can change the language. Lucky I found this post: http://mark.ossdl.de/2009/08/change-mui-language-pack-in-windows-7-home-and-professional/

So below is what I’ve done:

1. Download Windows 7 Service Pack 1 language pack (Because the laptop comes with Windows 7 SP1, I had RTM version of the language pack but it didn’t work.) – I downloaded the entire ISO from my TechNet subscription, but there are many blog posts around with the direct link to Windows Update for each individual language (such as this one: http://www.technize.net/windows-7-sp1-language-packs-direct-download-links-kb2483139/)
2. Extracted the downloaded ISO (from TechNet subscription) to C:\Apps\langpacks
3. in Command prompt:
1. dism /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\Apps\langpacks\zh-cn\lp.cab
2. bcdedit /set {current} locale zh-cn
3. bcdboot %WinDir% /l zh-cn
4. Backed up and deleted HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MUI\UILanguages\en-US
5. Reboot

Note: if there were any windows updates that were pending to be installed, the install may fail after the language was changed. I had to run wuauclt /detectnow so Windows Update agent detects the updates for different language.