I was able to install the Japanese version of Windows 2000 (on a second partition of the hard drive) on an American computer who's main OS was the English version of Windows XP. At first this made it so I could ONLY start JP Windows 2000 (EN Win XP showed up on the bootloader but wouldn't boot even when selected). From doing research from another one of my computers (got me a backup just in case my comp experiments go awry ), I found that the problem is the bootloader for Win XP was replaced with the Win 2000 one and it wasn't a lanugage problem even just a different generation of Windows problem. You see, Win 2000 bootloader can't load Win XP, but Win XP bootloader can load both of these generations of Windows. So I got the bootloader files off the Win XP disk and, while in Windows Explorer from the the JP Win 2000 installation) I replaced the files for the Win 2000 bootloader with the files for the Win XP bootloader, the rebooted. And guess what. NOW I could select either the EN Win XP or the JP Win 2000 from the boot menu! And BOTH were now able to correctly boot. And I could run software when booted from either OS. It was now a true dual boot system. And by the way, I had ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM with the fact my hardware was made in the US. Only thing is I couldn't find a sound driver for my computer's on-board sound hardware that would work with the Japanese version of Windows, so I had no sound when running the Japanese version of Windows. But other than that, it all ran perfectly, and I still had sound in my English version of Windows. In fact only ONE computer I know of has this kind of hardware incompatability being in Japanese. It is the PC-98. Made in Japan it had no compatability with other computers, nor did any other computer have any compatability with it. But this really wasn't a language problem, or a security encryption problem. This was simply because its CPU had its own unique instruction set, so only a program compiled for it would run on it, and would run on no other computer. In fact a special version of Microsoft DOS was made for it, but just being MS DOS did NOT mean any form of being an IBM compatible OS. It wasn't compatible with any other computer, and for the same reason the Macintosh, IBM compatible, Kaypro 2, Kaypro 10, Osborne, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, etc were all mutually incompatible. It had its own unique CPU as did each of the other computers I mentioned. All modern IBM compatible computers are capable of running any version of Windows, regardless of the primary language/region/country it was built in. The only disadvantage of using a foreign OS is that since it is foreign, you are most likely NOT able to understand the language that text in the interface is written in so using it may be like trial and error (unless you already know the physical location on a given menu of a desired button like the one to open the Windows Control Panel). No hardware compatibility problem exists. I don't know about theoretically IF it should work or not, or about what encryption it uses or whatever. All I know is that from personal experience, it DOES work.
