Windows Vista Ultimate language pack release information

Support for Windows Vista without any service packs installed ended on April 13, 2010. To continue receiving security updates for Windows, make sure you're running Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (SP2). For more information, refer to this Microsoft web page: Support is ending for some versions of Windows

INTRODUCTION

This article contains information about the Windows Vista language pack release.

Windows Vista language packs are available for computers that are running Windows Vista Ultimate. The Windows Vista language packs can be installed only from the Windows Ultimate Extras section on the Windows Update Web site. The language packs are not available on the Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) Web site or on the Microsoft Download Center.

To download Windows Vista language packs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://update.microsoft.com

More Information

Windows Vista language packs let you to take advantage of the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) feature of Windows Vista Ultimate. A Windows Vista language pack is a set of language-specific resource files that can be added to any language version of Windows Vista Ultimate.

When you install the Windows Vista language packs, the MUI lets you change the interface language of the operating system to any of the installed languages. This feature lets users select a language that they can use.

The MUI also lets you select different languages so that users can share the same computer. For example, one user may want to see the Windows Vista menus and other text in Japanese. Another user who logs on to the same Windows Vista computer may want to see the corresponding text in French.

Known issues during installation

Issue 1: You receive error code 1 or error code 2

Occasionally, language pack installation fails, and you receive error code 1 or error code 2. This behavior typically occurs for one of these reasons:

Windows Update installed another update that requested a restart.
A previous Windows Update process failed and put the computer in a corrupted state.

If you experience this issue, use the following methods.

Method 1: Install the updated lpksetup.exe package

Note This method only applies to error code 2. If you received error code 1, skip this method, and try Method 2.

For more information about how to install the updated lpksetup.exe package, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

942903 Installation of Windows Vista language pack from Windows Update fails

Method 2: Restart the computer, and install only one language pack

Restart the computer, and then reinstall the language pack without selecting any other updates.

We recommend that you only install one language pack at a time because of the required download size and the installation time.

Issue 2: Language packs take longer than expected to install

Because language packs contain language-specific resources for all the Windows Vista components, the language packs are large and may take some time to install. The average download size is approximately 200 megabytes (MB) and may require up to 1,100 MB of free disk space to install. The installation process takes approximately 30 minutes. However, the time varies, depending on the performance of the computer.

How to remove a language pack

Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
In Control Panel, click Clock, Language, and Region, click Regional and Language Options, and then click Change display language.
On the Keyboard and Languages tab, click Install/uninstall languages under Display language. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password, or click Continue.
In Choose to install or remove languages, click Remove languages.
Under Select the languages that you want to remove, select the language that you want to remove, and then click Next.
Click the language that you want to remove, and then click Remove.

Last Updated: Apr 14, 2010