zorphnog

What a bunch of crap. Looks like I'll be sticking with ghost.

After reading through this article several times, I think he just failed to include several key details. He is trying to overcome the 4GB file size limit of the OSCDIMG iso tool because he is trying to fit the entire image on ONE DVD. Basically he has a high density DVD that can accept more than 4GB of data, but the OSCDIMG tool that BDD uses to create .iso's won't accept a contiguous file over 4GB. So he modified the BDD script to handle split images on a single disc. The line that made me come to this conclusion is the step 9: 9. Perform "Update" the deployment point to generate the ISO file

Well obviously there is someway to do it since the Vista installation can be split. Hopefully M$ will be forthcoming and timely in their response. Keep us posted.

You may need to provide the full path for BSfr.exe as well.

Ok I have to say the documentation for the API is very poor. I'm trying to determine whether the WIM_MSG_ALIGNMENT message will allow you to reattempt the application of a file. Its not really clear what the alignment call allows you to do, but perhaps if you are able to send a -1 or something like that it would be able to go back to the file that failed. The other idea I have is to create a custom split function that would count the number of files in each .swm file before the WIM_MSG_SPLIT message is fired.

I repeat. The problem is not splitting the image into cd size files. The problem is applying the image once it is split on to multi-disc media. If you look through createspannedshares.cmd all it does is split the file into the specified size of your media and create iso's. It doesn't do anything towards applying the split image, this is all handled by the vista installation wizard application. If we could somehow hack out the image applying application that the vista installation uses we may be able to apply images that are spanned across media. createspannedshares.cmd is a dead end.

Actually, I forgot you had to have a volume license to do it, but if you do its fairly simple. Office 2003 Slipstreaming

You can use SetRes to change the resolution. Just add it to the System32 folder of your image and call it from the cmd prompt.

The hives for the PE image will be located in the \Windows\System32\config folder. The hive files have no extension. They just show up as: SYSTEM, SOFTWARE, DEFAULT, etc.

Well I think the problem might be with your installations returning 3010 instead of 0, but I'm not sure I'll have to investigate a little further. Is there any reason you're not slipstreaming your updates into the Office install? It would be much easier and less time consuming than installing them individually. edit: Have you tried installing it manually with the same folder structure and filenames?

Ok, I haven't looked at the source code, but if you copied that directly the +'s should be &'s. Thats just strictly from a vbscripting perspective.

Can you provide some more detail? Screen capture of the error, the installation script, etc. We need more to go on than just "Error: line 456".

wpeinit initializes all of your ip settings. If you just wait until it finishes then you will have an IP address. Alternatively, you could just add findstr and sleep to the system32 folder of your PE image.

I'm fairly sure that shutdown.exe requires you to use the -t parameter no matter what. So try: objWShell.Run("shutdown -r -t 0")

I would imagine that Microsoft would do some type of verificaiton of the install.wim file such as a checksum to ensure that it is a genuine vista image, but who knows. I doubt it will work, but keep us informed as to what you find out.

Your syntax is all wrong. The command you're trying to call doesn't exist. In a command prompt, type netsh. Once you're in the shell type 'help' for more help on syntax. Your command needs to be something like this: objShell.Run "%comspec% /k netsh interface ipv4 set address 'Local Area Connection' static " & strIP & " " & strSub & " " & strGtw,1, false

Find the wpi.css file of whatever theme you are using (i.e. %wpipath%\Themes\Glossy\wpi.css). Edit the file with a text viewer and look for a section that begins with .txt, change the color value. .txt { font-family: arial; font-weight: bold; color: #FFFFFF; <----------CHANGE this value the the html hex code of the color you would like font-size: 8pt; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 10px; } HTML color codes

Does this error occur when you click on the status button or can you not start the HTA to begin with?

I too have looked at the createspannedshares.cmd. It is intended to be used with the vista installation disk. So if you want to split the installation DVD into CDs you can. All the script does is make some calls to "imagex /split" and oscdimg. However, Vista installation image applying is controlled by a wizard application that applies the image through API calls not imagex. Therefore, they can prompt you to insert disks during the apply process. Imagex does not prompt you for the next span of your image, it simply quits applying the image and displays an error.

I have ran into this issue as well with my custom theme. The Glossy theme is the default theme for WPI and therefore hard-coded into the scripts. Basically, there are several areas in the scripts where the existance of certain files from the glossy theme are validated. The simplest way around this issue is to just leave the glossy theme in your themes folder. It only takes up a few MB and you don't even have to use it. Alternatively, you could rename your custom theme to Glossy which would take a few minutes of find and replacing throughout your theme files.

Silent install just means that there are no user input prompts/screens, you run and configure the install from command line switches.

I have not tried to split an appended image, but the problem you are going to run into if you get that to work is applying images spanned over multiple discs. The problem is that imagex will not prompt you for the next image files on a different disc. I have been looking for a solution for this for a while and I have concluded that imagex just cannot do it. Just some food for thought before you get too in depth.

winpeshl.ini is the easiest way to do it, and I'm not sure that adding a runonce value would suppress the shell from loading. Just in case you were wondering, though, registry hives are located in \Windows\System32\config folder of your boot image.

Hmm. Looks like you might have some WMI issues. As far as I can tell you cannot create activex objects. You might want to try running this batch file to reset your WMI. FIXWMI.CMD ------------------------ @echo on cd /d c:\temp if not exist %windir%\system32\wbem goto TryInstall cd /d %windir%\system32\wbem net stop winmgmt winmgmt /kill if exist Rep_bak rd Rep_bak /s /q rename Repository Rep_bak for %%i in (*.dll) do RegSvr32 -s %%i for %%i in (*.exe) do call :FixSrv %%i for %%i in (*.mof,*.mfl) do Mofcomp %%i net start winmgmt goto End :FixSrv if /I (%1) == (wbemcntl.exe) goto SkipSrv if /I (%1) == (wbemtest.exe) goto SkipSrv if /I (%1) == (mofcomp.exe) goto SkipSrv %1 /RegServer :SkipSrv goto End :TryInstall if not exist wmicore.exe goto End wmicore /s net start winmgmt :End fixwmi.cmd

While I agree that compress max takes a substantially greater amount of time to capture, the difference in size can be great depending on what kind of data you're capturing. Compression algorithms rely on repeated data, so if you have a lot of similar data it can make a difference. In my captures it reduces the size by about 25% which is fairly good considering I have 9GB images. Though for smaller images its not very beneficial.