VMware Tools installation defaulting to Chinese

[ww9]

Hi, I just migrated a WinXP computer to a virtual machine on Fusion 4.1.

Works great, except that when I try uninstalling some software that is no longer needed, using the standard Windows add/remove programs tool, all the dialogs are  in Chinese. This happens for some of the software to be uninstalled, but not others.

I guess I would blame that on the individual software programs, except that the dialogs were all in Chinese also when I tried to install VMware Tools.

I guessed at the meanings of the various choices during the install, choosing "Typical", and the tools installed and I rebooted Windows.

Now the Tools dialogs are in English, but whenever I click the Help button within the Tools dialog, the help files are all in Chinese.

I found a similar problem posted at http://communities.vmware.com/message/1859046#1859046, where the poster created a Win7 image using his install media rather than by migrating an existing PC. The successful solution there was to re-run the installation without using Easy Install. Unfortunately, the VMware migration tool doesn't offer me the option of using or not using any Easy Install method.

Has anyone seen this before, or have any ideas?

Thank you

[a_p_]

Did you already check the language settings in Start -> Control Panel - "Regional and Language Options"?

André

[admin]

Interesting! I would suggest that you Migrate again and short-circuit the automatic tools install process:

  1. Migrate again (as you did before).

  2. After you click 'Finish' on the Mac side, you will notice that the resulting VM appears, powered off. Tools are not yet installed at this point.

  3. (Optional) I suggest you click on the 2nd icon from the left of the toolbar (snapshots), and make a snapshot, e.g. 'Fresh Migration', in case something goes wrong, you can always get back to this state. Click 'Close' to get back out of the Snapshot UI.

  4. Start the VM (tools will automatically install after Windows boots up)

  5. After Windows has booted, quickly log in at the login prompt (if you have one). When you see the installer for VMware Tools launch, cancel it.

At this point, you'll have a VM with no tools running, presumably in the same language as your original PC you migrated. You can make a snapshot of this state as well, and then install VMware Tools manually (from the Fusion menu Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools) and see if you get what you expect.

Please let us know how it goes!

[Peter Jonasson]

What locale and region setting does your XP have? Chances are you have added/modified such in the past. For instance, you can set a display language to English but the region (like date and time format) is Chinese, which can affect how help files and software is displayed (due to their own various UTF8/16 handling).

By configuring then Language and Regional settings to a default state... English assumed, it may solve the dilemma.

If the XP/7 version was installed using a so-called Multi-Language Disc used by the PC manufacturer there are issues in this regard we have logged and are actively working on.

[ww9]

Thanks everyone for the helpful posts. You were all right on. I'm embarrassed to see it was not a VMware problem at all.

When I go to Windows Control Panel->Regional and Language Options->Advanced, there is a drop-down list for selecting a "language to match the language version of the non-Unicode programs I want to use". This had been set to Chinese. When I changed it to English (American), everything worked correctly.

I also went back to my original XP machine, that I had migrated from. This also had the same issues, which I corrected with the same adjustment.

So VMware had migrated my XP machine faithfully, including this setting.

Thanks everyone for your help.