We are going to hosting 2 foreign exchange students from Italy. I thought it would be nice to change one of my computers into italian so that they could use it more easily. Is Windows in Italian an option I can do (and if so how?) or are the discs sold country specific?
Are you sure they wouldn’t rather have it in English? I would think that one reason for coming over here is to practice the language and do things “American.”
Just a thought. I don’t actually have the answer to your question.
control panel
regional and language options
play around with that and see if you can get it into Italian.
Switch to Finestre XP[sup]®[/sup] 
Well, they’re only going to be here a week, so while they are here to sample US culture, they aren’t going to learn anything significant. I know they have 5 to 6 years of english, but why have to struggle when you want to email or IM your friends or parents.
Changing settings in Windows will not change menu languages and such. You’d have to install a different copy of Windows for that. Changing the locale only changes the formats for numbers, currencies, dates and time. You can also change input locale, but unless you’ve got an Italian keyboard (assuming it’s different from a US one) that will only be confusing.
You could install Firefox in Italian, which would solve the internet aspect. And there’s probably an messenging program that offers a similar solution.