Add language bar to a Windows 7 user, not administrator
We are a school district, so I have a need for some Windows 7 machines in Chinese and Japanese rooms to have their respective languages available via the Language Bar. This is easy for the teachers, as they are local administrators on the machines, so they can just go to Control Panel, Region and Language, Change Keyboard, Add, [chinese or japanese], OK a few times, and then it shows up in the start bar and they can switch easily between english and other. But this setting is user specific, so when a student logs in, it goes away, and since they can't access control panel, they can't just add it.
I was able to solve this in the XP days by setting up a user with the bar enabled, then copying that profile to the "default profile" and all future logons would use that new default and it worked great.
I'm looking for any way to enable this. Via some kind of script/registry key/etc that I could do to my existing machines would be best (then I could make it a post install too), but other ideas are welcome.
These machines were imaged via the K2000, via an image, not scripted install. I'm not opposed to needing to do this on a new image, if there is a way anyone knows to set this up so it does it to all future logins (like XP did).
Thanks for any ideas you may have.
-Carl Sundermann
Answers (3)
You can actually do the same thing in Windows 7 that you used to do in Windows XP. It is no longer a manual function and is done through sysprep.
The Copy Profile setting, in the Windows Shell Setup component, is what you need to get this working. Set up your account, have Copy Profile = true, and run sysprep from your configured account and it will be copied over to your default user account.
For some more information about this process and sysprep in general, check out this KKE recording:
K1000 KKE's: https://support.software.dell.com/k1000-systems-management-appliance/kb?k=KKE
Comments:
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It's been several months, but I'm back to trying to solve this problem. I viewed that KKE, and while it was very helpful (I learned some things I didn't know about with sysprep), it does not appear to solve the language bar problem.
Here's how I've tested it... I set up a test machine with a fresh install of windows 7 x64. I create the unattend file on my workstation using the AIK, setting Copy Profile = true. I set a couple other customizations just to make sure it's working, namely, I put a shortcut to Calculator in the start menu and also Pin a couple shortcuts to the start bar. Also, of course, I turn on Japanese and Chinese languages, so I see the language bar in the lower right of the start bar.
I run sysprep with my unattend file. When it's done and logged back on, the only thing that has "stuck" is my pinned shortcut to Calculator in the start menu. My pinned shortcuts on the start bar as well as my language bar are both gone.
Any ideas where I might be going wrong? Thanks for any info you have.
Carl Sundermann - sundermannc@wdmcs.org 11 years ago-
As for the taskbar icons there is a command to not "clean" it. The syntax is <DoNotCleanTaskBar>true</DoNotCleanTaskBar> but I don't remember which component and phase that goes in.
To setup the language settings I have started to use the Region and Language control panel Adminstrative tab. This gives you the ability to copy the settings from the current user to the default user profile. I no longer copy the profile as part of sysprep since we prefer to control the user experience through group policy or similar registry settings. - chucksteel 11 years ago-
Thank you, Chuck. For the purposes of what I need at this time, this was the best solution for me for the language bar. - sundermannc@wdmcs.org 11 years ago
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pinning items to the task bar are a different answer file line. I need to research if the language bar can be configured with a sysprep command
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<CopyProfile>true</CopyProfile>
<TaskbarLinks>
<Link0>%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Mozilla Firefox.lnk</Link0>
<Link1>%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Google Chrome.lnk</Link1>
</TaskbarLinks>
from http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/windows-7-image-process-for-the-college-s-classrooms - SMal.tmcc 11 years ago-
looks like the language bar is a configurable line item in the WAIK answer file
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/5a76b6c2-5e9e-454c-89f7-df439a8356fb/language-bar-resets-after-sysprep - SMal.tmcc 11 years ago
You can enforce the language bar settings with group policy. When you setup the languages you want the user to have the settings are stored in the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload. Export that key and have those settings applied to users. Alternatively you can add them to the default user profile by loading the hive at c:\users\default\ntuser.dat and importing the keys.
I do things like this with a master user and copy that profile to default.
http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/windows-7-image-process-for-the-college-s-classrooms
also you may want to look at Faronics deep freeze, we make all domain users admins on our classroom machines so they get the fill experiance of being able to make changes like this, since they would have to make the same type of changes on their own machines.
