msdemich

Thanks again. Your addons rock.

I believe I found where I went wrong. I was using NTRegOpt during the runonceex phase. NTRegOpt will make an optimized copy of your registry and set windows to use it on reboot. If you make any changes to the registry after NTRegOpt optimizes the registry, but BEFORE the reboot, any more registry changes will be to the old registry and will not appear in the optimized registry after reboot. This is why NTRegOpt is designed to reboot automaticly after it finishes; I just use the -noreboot switch to prevent it. (This also explains my problem with running scripts from HKCU..\RunOnce) My workaround is just to set my script in \Start Menu\Programs\Startup restart the computer once more and everything imports after this restart. (Plus you get that "fresh booted without runonceex" feeling, if you know what I mean)

Maybe you could use a thumbdrive as your intall medium? Most modern PCs allow for boot from USB in the BIOS. The other way might be to create a "true" addon (.cab files with install.inf) and you can modify your .inf file [sourceDisksFiles] section so all the file entries =2 instead of one, then put those files in the /i386 folder of your second install CD. To learn more about creating addons, Ricktendo64 has created some very informative videos on the subject: http://www.wincert.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2652 Making addons is great, but making a multi-cd install for office will take lots of time. Its nice to string everything together to get that "one button and it all works" feeling, but sometimes all the time and energy used to create that "one button" wont quite make-up for the on-site convenience. You could just create an autoit script just for office from a thunbdrive.

I believe MHz is right; the user has not been created yet at the cmdlines.txt phase (since it runs before restart and OOBE). Furthermore, if the User part of the registry hive isn't created yet, which resides in your %UserProfile% folder, then HKCU reg entries will not import here. Its best to run those reg tweaks at RunOnceEx phase, which happens AFTER the restart. This page may help with adding reg entries and running programs at the RunOnceEx phase: http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/31/ Are you sure that your COOL_STUFF folder is created and the files copied properly on setup? Do you put it in the $OEM$\$1 folder on your install CD or do you create the folder and copy the files another way? As Mhz mentions, the winrar and 7zip installers need either command-line switches or to be packaged so as to be silent installers. You can find some of these packages made by the community here: http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewforum.php?...f364be897813270.

It sounds like you may have a bad drive. Try downloading imgburn and copy a CD/burn ISO with it. Use the verify function. If the verify fails then your drive may be bad. Laptop CD drives don't seem to live long. I've had to replace my CD drive in both my IBM Thinkpad and Dell Inspiron.

You need at least SP1 installed in order to install SP3 on a working install of XP. If you are going to slipstream it onto a CD, you do NOT need to slipsteam any other service pack at all. You can take an original XP CD from 2001, copy it to your hard drive and slipsteam SP3 to it, and you can make a working install CD from that. Possibly, google "XP powerpacker"

Although I like the search feature built-in to the Vista start menu, I prefer the XP start menu because it expands menus out. I can always organize them from there. Vista's way of bottling up all the items from the programs menu really bugs me. I use a 1280x1024 screen so I hate being trapped in a tiny menu. To serve the purpose of the Vista search feature on the start menu, I use Launchy.

Yeah. That should work. Have it look for the compressed SPx.CA_ as well. Thanks!

Yes, and I could manually remove the David Byrne song, language files, manual install, and drivers as well. I already know how to do this; thats beside the point. The purpose of nLite was to make it easy to remove pieces of windows; to save scripts for the future so you dont have to type out bigs lists of what to keep and take away, or worse, try to keep them all stright in your head. (Mine are about 500 lines of settings, including reg tweaks) I submit that those little pieces I mentioned above, (SP2CAB, SP2.CAT, etc.) weigh-in from about 1 Meg to about 21 Meg, and are in 99% cases unneeded, and are commonly removed. I bet that most of those with SP3 that don't remove those files probably don't know that they can be safely removed. If nLite will let me select several <40kb files for removal, why not a couple more 500KB files? Isn't this sort of thing EXACTLY what nLite is for?

My point was that nLite would move me to the "create account" section and warn me that me I MUST create an account. Since this warning doesn't mention OOBE, it implies that you have to do it from the "create account" section if jumps you to. This can confuse someone who has never integrated Home edition into believing that he MUST set a seconf user through nLite. (like me) I just hoped this elucidation might help someone else.

Try RogueSpears site: (You'll have to register first) http://www.doitrightconsulting.net/forum/v...p?f=8&t=132 Or try the RyanVM forums: http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6512

Would it hurt anything to remove these? If you have SP3, you dont need sp2.cab or sp2.cat do you? Can there be an option to remove WIN51IC.SP2, the .HTM files, autorun.inf and setup.exe from the root folder? Thanks for considering this.

It always spooked me when nLite would give me this warning that I HAD to create another account for it to work. However I've discovered that I don't have to create another account. I just have to make sure OOBE is enabled then I can ignore the warning and start the nlite process. The Administrator account works when created in OOBE. With this, Windows doesn't show the login screen on startup, it just boots straight to desktop.

After a fresh XP install and the destop loads for the first time, I run a batch file to make some final registry tweaks, clean up shortcuts, and reboot one last time. Once this script is complete, I check that the shortcuts (Internet Explorer.lnk, Outlook Express.lnk, etc.) are deleted like they are supposed to then I check the registry to be sure the new settings are actually there. But after reboot, the shortcuts are back and the registry has reverted to the old settings again. If I run this script and reboot a second time, all the settings will stick. But they never stick after the first boot. This drove me crazy trying to find out why the right settings wouldn't stick. It wasn't until I started calling the script from HKCU..\RunOnce that I concluded that the registry simply was not saving the changes. Using Runonce, the script would run, reboot, then run AGAIN, and reboot. After the second reboot it would not run again. On first boot to desktop, Windows would delete the RunOnce entry like it was supposed to do, which I would verify with regedit every time. But when I reboot the, RunOnce entry would be there again. So -only on first complete boot and shutdown- windows would revert back to the same HKCU..\RunOnce setting, even after it ran it. Observed on multiple installations of XP Pro OEM and XP Home OEM. Somehow I think this behavior is by design from Microsoft, but I've searched for it and haven't find any documentation. The registry may be locked somehow on first boot (after GuiRunOnce) and not be editable until a second boot, but the shortcuts? Why would windows put those deleted shortcuts back after restart from desktop? Any other files copied on first complete boot seem to stay in their place. As a workaround, I've stopped using RunOnce and I'm running my script (1stBoot.cmd) from %AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup that will set the computer to automaticly restart, delete itself from the %AllUsersProfile%..\Startup folder, and set a second script (2ndBoot.cmd) to run on next boot via %AllUsersProfile%..\Startup. So after the first boot to desktop, 1stBoot.cmd will just set 2ndBoot.cmd to autorun and reboot. 2ndBoot.cmd does all the real work with registry settings and shortcuts on the second boot. If anyone knows why the registry settings don't take on the first complete boot to desktop, (and why the shortcuts come back) please let me know.

Link dead for me