From Microsoft

Dec 4, 2009 13:20 GMT  ·  By

According to Microsoft, customers that buy a new OEM computer with Windows 7 preinstalled can experience problems related to the system language. The Redmond company informs that issues can range from having the system language changed on restart to receiving a Stop error messages "0x00000021a," also on the reboot of the machine. Users will experience this issues in scenarios in which they start-up the new Windows 7 computer for the first time and in the Out of Box Experience (OOBE) wizard choose to have the display language either Chinese or Portuguese.

“In this scenario, you experience one or both of the following issues: after you restart the computer, the system display language is changed to a random language. When you try to restart the computer, the system cannot start and you receive a Stop error that resembles the following: STOP 0x0000021a. This issue may occur up to several days after you start the computer for the first time,” Microsoft explained.

At fault for the problems described above is Lpksetup.exe. It appears that Lpksetup.exe manages to remove the language pack associated with the system display language incorrectly. In addition, using the Language Pack Installer (Lpksetup.exe) in order to do away with a language pack can also result in similar issues. Microsoft explains that users with OEM machines preinstalled with Windows 7 Ultimate, Enterprise, or Windows Server 2008 R2 are prone to such issues.

“After you run the OOBE wizard, Lpksetup.exe automatically removes the unused language packs. When it removes language packs, Lpksetup.exe compares language names instead of language codes. If a removed language and the current system language have the same language name, the current system language pack is also removed. For example, ZH-TW and ZH-HK share the name "Chinese",” Microsoft added.

Users that are affected by these specific issues should be happy to know that Microsoft has a hotfix in place designed to address the problem.