Change Workstation UI language

[Steph_62]

Hi 🙂

I use VMW Pro but i meet an issue when i want to past a password into login form.

As my regional OS options are French when i past a password into login form it's converted to English so the paste option is useless.

This is because of VMW Pro UI language i guess,

I looked around for a solution to set French as default UI language but it seems to be impossible, am i right ?

Because of my passwords complexity this is very annoying 😕

Thanks in advance for your replies

Best regards.

[bluefirestorm]

There Workstation Pro UI languages can be either English, Japanese, or Simplified Chinese.

I doubt the paste issue is related to the language/locale settings of either host OS or guest OS. The paste function should be agnostic about the language/locale and treat everything as a stream of bytes and there should not be any conversion.

This is a French text that I just pasted from the host to a guest OS and both host and guest OS are set in English locale and the Workstation UI is English.

Pourquoi et comment s’inscrire au registre des Français établis hors de France ?

It's possible it is the website/application not allowing paste for password fields. In some cases, the application might appear to accept pasting by showing a mask like **** as if it did but in reality it does not. I would suggest to do a simple test by pasting to Notepad or Word or some other text editor and see if the French password gets pasted or at least get you to see if any characters are pasting through. I doubt there is any conversion occurs with the paste action.

[Steph_62]

Hi blue 🙂

When i read your answer i realize i'm misunderstood :'(

During my search for an answer i found in a VMWare topic the Workstation UI is linked to locale setting which is French on my computer.

I also read as you say there is only japanese, chinese or english.

It becomes to be a problem when it converts text from French mapping to English mapping 😞 Please find a sample attached.

About the pic : The VM is a French OS Windows 2022 in a cluster managed by a vcenter in a 7.03 Vsphere. My computer is a French Windows 11... Don't you find this magical ? ^^'

Had to take a pic with the phone, can't use screen capture in this situation.

Regards

Stephane

[bluefirestorm]

So the Windows 2022 VM is remote running on an ESXi host and not a local VM running within Workstation Pro itself. You just use VMware Workstation to have the GUI view of the VM. Looking at the picture, looks like the issue is not about pasting text but typing the text. AZERTY (French keyboard layout) is treated as if it is QWERTY (English) layout.

You could shut down the VM and add the following line to the vmx configuration

RemoteDisplay.vnc.keymap = "fr"

For details see this https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1004815

[Steph_62]

Exactly, i use Workstation to connect to this VM (not only) 🙂

I agree, it acts like i was typing AZERTY on a EN_US keyboard but i can confirm this a French language and keyboard layout VM 😞

When i type it's OK, when i copy and paste (through "edit" menu because direct paste doesn't work) AZERTY become QWERTY even if i add your line into vmx file it's KO

It makes me crazy ><

[bluefirestorm]

A bit surprised that VMware Workstation allows pasting to the Windows logon password field that way.

It looks like Workstation is not pasting byte values from the clipboard but pasting keystrokes otherwise AZERTY should not become QWERTY as the ASCII values of A, Z and Q, W are the same regardless of locale/language setting but conversion occurred due to their position in French AZERTY /English QWERTY layout. If it is pasting keystrokes, you likely will also encounter other problems such as those that require AltGr. Other than the VNC keymap, I am not aware of any other VMware related settings. But with the way the password is pasted it looks like it has nothing to do with VNC keymaps at all.

Is the system locale of the client desktop running Workstation also set to French? What is the output of Get-WinSystemLocale from Powershell. If it is not French, you could try setting it as such

Set-WinSystemLocale -SystemLocale fr-FR

[Steph_62]

This is exactly what i think too, it acts like paste would type the password on an English keyboard layout...

When i directly type the password into the login form the layout is French.

I confirm Get-winSystemLocale return

Maybe my last solution is to open a VMWare case?

LCID Name DisplayName
---- ---- -----------
1036 fr-FR Français (France)

[bluefirestorm]

You could try reporting to VMware and the fix might end up something that you don't want/expect (i.e. the "Paste" might get removed from the Menu).

First of all, assuming the Windows 2022 server belongs to a company, the IT security auditors will be unhappy if they find out you are attempting copy/paste of passwords. The "Paste" in the Workstation menu is like a backdoor to pasting password which Windows OS itself does not allow (Ctrl-V does not work, right click on mouse no option to Paste).

Generally, copy/paste is generally frowned upon especially in a server environment as it can be used as a means of data theft or vulnerable to data leak. I think that's why it's disabled by default for VMs created on ESXi.

[Steph_62 · Accepted solution]

Nice remark though.

The ability to copy/paste is available using RDP but RDP can be disabled but manually started when necessary.

I gonna open a case 🙂

Many thanks for your answers !

Best regards 🙂