Special characters like Umlauts (äöü) in CS.ini not processing correct ?

Hi,

what I want to do is a little bit branding  of the Tasksequence-Progressbar.

you could see Branding the deployment

So I set the MDT Variable _SMSTSOrgName to the name of my Organisation and in Germany we have sometimes umlauts (äöü) in this Name ;-). When I set the variable with a umlauts for example

_SMSTSOrgName=ERROR-ä-

then I see in the Progressbar.

ERROR-ä-

My first Step was, that I fill out the same variable in the MDT-Database, so I thought there are some encoding-problems between reading CS.INI and setting the value in the progressbar. But the Problem was the same. Then I wrote little script for a TS and setting the OrganisationsName direct over “Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI" Com-Object.

you can see on this site Hiding (and showing) the task sequence progress dialog box

And then all looks fine. After that I extend the script with a little parameter /orgname and I set the variable_SMSTSOrgName to that parameter in the Tasksequence

cscript exampleScript.wsf /orgname:"% _SMSTSOrgName%"

And now there is the problem again. Then I take the name of the Org direct to the parameter

cscript exampleScript.wsf /orgname:"ERROR-ä-"

and the problem is the same. Interesting is, that I can reproduce the convert-problem in a editor (notepad++). Put the editor to UNICOD encoding and type ä, after that i change the encoding to ASCII (ANSI) and I see the ugly character ä. So I think the problem is, that the variable-values are stored internal in UNICODE-format and if this variable are used, maybe during a execution of a external program, then it was committed and convert to ASCII and then special characters like Umlauts are not represented  in the right form. But that are only guesses of mine.

So my question ist, is this a bug in MDT or what can I do as a workaround, so that I can use our Organsationname in the right notation.

Thanks for our help.

jens

PS: A workaround what I have try out was,that  i put my example script at the beginning of the Tasksequence and set the OrgName direct, so that it appears in the right formatting in the progressbar. But when the computer is rebooted and that happens on different process-steps, then the mdt mechanism would be set die name and then the problem comes up again. So that workaround is not really practical, because i must be place the script on so many places in the tasksequence, but this would a little bit to confusing.