You reformatted your entire hard-drive just so you could play as the French in late era on XL for MTW?
. . .. I would've done the exact same thing. Wow, shows how much we all love MTW.

As for the "certain number of tabs", the format in the startpos isn't incredibly rigid. That's why you'll find tabs in some gaps and five or six spaces in others. Just as long as there is at least one tab between each bit of info is the important thing to remember.

Anyway, tell me, did you try again after this reformatting?