T42p Restore CD's?

[365]

Hello,

I am in the United Kingdom and recently bought a brand new Thinkpad t42p from Insight. It was a very good price but had a Italian keyboard and system. Before purchasing I rang IBM and one of their tech people told me that I could purchase an English keyboard (correct) and I could change the language to English by going into access IBM at start-up and changing it from Italian to English.

Armed with this information I purchased the machine with no right to return it. When it arrived, everything was in Italian as expected but I couldn't change it to English. I booted into Windows and it seems that there is no way to change it here either (please tell me if I'm missing something). So I contacted IBM and asked would they send me a set of English restore CD's and was told that there is no way I can have English retore CD's only Italian ones. So they gave me bad information and now won't even sell me a set of restore CD's.

Does anyone know where I could purchase a set of English restore CD's for a T42p in the UK? I will even swap them for my Italian ones which are being posted out to me today or perhaps someone knows how I can change the system to English?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

TIA

[GomJabbar]

Try going to: Start > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options. Select Languages > Details... > Add... . See if you can't change your keyboard and language settings here.

[Zeitgeist]

Before purchasing I rang IBM and one of their tech people told me that I could purchase an English keyboard (correct) and I could change the language to English by going into access IBM at start-up and changing it from Italian to English.

You cannot change the language of the WinXP operating system. You have only two options:

1. Try to get the english recovery CDs from Bill, other members of the forum http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... t=recovery or from Ebay (it is possible to burn them yourself).

2. Buy a WinXP CD.

[GACrabill]

This eBay seller (located in the UK) just sold 3 sets of Recovery CDs at this auction :
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 7170893640

You could contact him thru eBay.

[GomJabbar]

Before purchasing I rang IBM and one of their tech people told me that I could purchase an English keyboard (correct) and I could change the language to English by going into access IBM at start-up and changing it from Italian to English.

You cannot change the language of the WinXP operating system. You have only two options:

1. Try to get the english recovery CDs from Bill, other members of the forum http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... t=recovery or from Ebay (it is possible to burn them yourself).

2. Buy a WinXP CD.

Zeitgeist is spot on - on all counts.

There are basically three types of Windows XP Professional.
(1) Localized version which only has menus and dialog boxes in that language.
(2) International English version which has available menus and dialog boxes in multiple languages (some parts of OS remain in english).
(3) MUI (Multi User Interface) version which can be set up for multiple languages.

Upgrading options are limited. See below:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A localized language version of a Windows–based client cannot be upgraded to a different language version of Windows XP Professional, or to the Windows XP Professional MUI Pack. For example, you cannot upgrade a Japanese localized language version of Windows 2000 Professional to either the International English language version or MUI Pack of Windows XP Professional.

Important

To replace any other language versions of Windows with the Windows XP Professional MUI Pack, you must remove the previous Windows version and perform a clean installation of the Windows XP Professional MUI Pack.
You can only upgrade to the Windows XP Professional MUI Pack from an International English language version of Windows, or from the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional MultiLanguage Version. Table 3.5 shows which of these earlier versions of Windows clients can be upgraded to the Windows XP Professional MUI Pack.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following are some links that I found researching this.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte ... uiovw.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu ... l_xjgd.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu ... l_ffju.asp

[365]

Thanks everyone, for your help, I thought it wouldn't be good news but still ...