How do I install support for East Asian languages without Windows installation disk?

November 3, 2006 9:58 PM

How do I install support for East Asian languages in Windows XP without the Windows installation disk?
posted by monsterhero to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

That depends on why you don't have the installation disc. If it's because Windows was preinstalled on your machine by the OEM, the required files may well be somewhere on your hard drive (perhaps in a subfolder of C:\OEM).

If you had a Windows installation disc mounted as D:, the folder with the supplementary language files would be D:\I386\LANG, and would contain a bunch of files with .dl_ extensions. Look for that pattern somewhere on your hard drive, and if you find it, browse to it when the Regional and Language Options control asks you for the Windows installation disc.
posted by flabdablet at 12:17 AM on November 4, 2006

If you install some free fonts that support the appropriate character sets, and tell your browser to use them, you'll be able to see the text at least.

As far as the IME goes, though, I think you're out of luck (unless you have Office installed and you want to give this a try along with the other languages), unless you download a pirate copy of XP just to gank the appropriate i386\LANG folders, and gosh, I'd never suggest something like that!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:41 AM on November 4, 2006