PaulIA

Symantec is surely going to be the death of me. I've been trying to get the virus update to work during the unattended phase of my setup with no luck. After searching the forum, it appears that I'm the only one having this problem. Any help would be appreciated. Using RunOnce, I'm executing the following: msiexec.exe /i "Symantec AntiVirus.msi" /qb!- RUNLIVEUPDATE=0 RUNSCAN=0 SYMPROTECTDISABLED=0 which installs just find and dandy. Then I want to update my virus definitions so that they are current, so I am executing the following: c:\program files\symantec antivirus\vpdn_lu.exe /s which is where the problem occurs. In the event log, I get an error stating "Manual LiveUpdate failed to download Virus Definitions." I've tried taking the vpdn_lu line out of the RunOnce batch file and putting it in a batch file that gets executed after the machine is booted. Same results. This is the code I use to setup the batch file. It gets executed at the end of my original RunOnce session: REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx /V TITLE /D "Symantec" /f REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\010 /VE /D "Symantec" /f REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\010 /V 1 /D "c:\Symantec.cmd" /f I thought that maybe the network hadn't finished initializing before this batch file was run, so I put a 2 minute delay in before the batch file was called. Same results. If I let the machine boot and execute the batch file (from DOS or from Explorer) manually, I get the following event log entry "Manual LiveUpdate verified there are no new Virus Definitions available." Which causes me to bang my head on my keyboard several times. It works when I manually run it, but not when it's run from RunOnce. Any clues? P.S. Yes, I know you can download the current virus defs and slipstream them into the installation. That's not what I want to do. I don't want to have to update my UA disc every month.

I think we're bothing saying the same thing, just from different perspectives. For RIS setups, I agree that the $OEM$ folder needs to be at the same level as the i386 directory. I've never disagreed with you on that. But, what I've been trying to get at is that for non RIS setups, it also needs to be at the same level as the i386 directory. Either that, or we're both right and it works from either place (Wouldn't that be a hoot) I looked at the Mircosoft site and it's funny that I'd found that page before, but it was linked from a reference on RIS installations. Leave it to Microsoft to make things more confusing than they have to be Cheers!

@RJTPlomp: Thanks for the reply. I've been using ORK Tools to customize my office installation, but I was hoping that there was some way that I could copy over my existing Outlook.pst file into my new setup. Alas, Microsoft doesn't seem to want to let me do this I took a look at what happens when Outlook first starts up and after wading through 275 registry key changes capture with RegShot, I gave up thinking that I wanted to simulate this myself with a script. AutoIt is looking really good right now...

Well.... I'm not doing anything with RIS and putting the folder outside of the i386 folder has always been the way that I (and others in my shop) had done it for single PC setups. In fact, when I first started doing this, I once put the $OEM$ folder inside the i386 directory and I know for a fact that it doesn't work for single PC setups. So what you are saying (that the folder needs to be inside the i386 directory) may be true for RIS setups, but it doesn't appear to be true for non RIS setups or we'd all have non-working UA discs Just out of curiosity, where on the Microsoft site are you getting information that indicates that non RIS setups should be this way? I'm always willing to learn a thing or two

Don't things like this just drive you crazy? It sounds like you may have a couple of problems here. First, your $OEM$ folder needs to stay outside of the i386 folder. I think we have some people on this board that are confused about this. If you need clarification on this, take a look at the OEM Reference at the Unattended site. Second, you probably are missing some entries in your WinNT.sif file. You do need to have OEMPreinstall=Yes in this file. If the system stops and is asking for additional information, it's because you didn't supply that information in the WinNT.sif file. Take a look at WinNT.sif Reference on the Unattended site for more information. Here is an example of what my WinNT.sif file looks like: [Branding] BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes [Data] AutomaticUpdates=Yes AutoPartition=1 MsDosInitiated=0 UnattendedInstall=Yes [GuiUnattended] AdminPassword=xxxxxxxx AutoLogon=Yes OEMSkipRegional=1 OemSkipWelcome=1 TimeZone=20 [Identification] JoinWorkgroup=WORKGROUP [Networking] InstallDefaultComponents=Yes [Proxy] HTTP_Proxy_Server=localhost:8080 Proxy_Enable=1 Proxy_Override=localhost Use_Same_Proxy=1 [Unattended] DisableDynamicUpdates=No DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore OemPreinstall=Yes OemSkipEula=Yes Repartition=Yes TargetPath=\WINDOWS UnattendMode=FullUnattended UnattendSwitch=Yes WaitForReboot=No [UserData] ProductID=xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx FullName="John Doe" OrgName="ACME Corporation" ComputerName=ACME1 Hope this helps.

I'm not familiar with the software you're trying to install, but a quick Google shows that some of our members are using it. They might come through for you yet, so hang in there If all else fails and you don't get any response, you can always write a short little AutoIt script to install this software for you. Check out the AutoIt site if you want to go that direction.

Welcome to the forum! I'm probably not understanding your question, so pardon me if I miss the mark here. My understanding is that you create an SFX file that unpacks itself to %programfiles%\portable and then installs your application from that directory. After the application installs, you want to get rid of the %programfiles%\portable folder? If this is the case, you can do this automaically with the WinRAR SFX file itself. When setting up the SFX file, do not specify the hardcoded path in the "Path to extract" field. Instead, go to the Modes tab and click the "Unpack to temporary folder" checkbox. When you do this, WinRAR will unpack the files to a temporary folder, run whatever command you have specified in the "Run after extraction" field and then delete the temporary folder when the command is finished. That way, you don't have to clean up anything. If this isn't what you are after, please elaborate a bit and we'll see what we can do to help you out.

There are a lot of utilites floating around that will do this for you. I use RegShot a lot and have not had any problems. It will not only tell you the registry keys that have changed, but you can also have it "watch" directories or drives and it will tell you all of the files that changed too.

Now I'm confused Is the OEM Reference at the Unattended site for RIS or "all other installation types"? It shows the $OEM$ folder at the same level as the i386 folder.

You might want to look at this as a reference for the OEM folders: OEM Folder Reference From what you are describing, I don't think you have your files in the correct location on your installation CD

You might want to read this thread for some help: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=81788 They're talking about doing an unattended install from a USB drive. There are also some links within this thread about what you'll need.

Thanks for the reply and the tips. I'm going to keep working at this to see if I can come up with an answer. I guess I could replace the file AFTER outlook has created it's version, but then I'd have to AutoIt Outlook after the installation to get it to do that. Hmmm... seems like you could "trick" Outlook into thinking that it's already done the initial setup. I feel a long night with RegShot coming on...

Don't know if this is what you're looking for, but it may give you some ideas... When working on slipstreaming some Windows products, I needed to know if I'd applied the hot fix already or not. In my slipstream batch file, I wrote out a 1 byte file for each successful hot fix that I had applied, giving the file the name of the hot fix with a ".txt" extension. Then in the batch file, before I applied the hot fix, I would check to see if this file existed. If it did, then I would skip the hot fix installation. If you did this, you could just always copy the master batch file to the local computer. When it runs, it would check the local computer and would only install the new apps you've installed. Hope this helps...

I think deleting the shortcut(s) after installation is going to be your solution Of course, you could write your own installer

Hmmm.... something smells fishy here. Are you sure that the reg entry is being executed and there isn't a conflicting registry entry somewhere in your tweaks file? Does the reg entry "take"? For example, after you've applied this reg entry, can you open regedit, navigate to this key and see that they are set like we've shown you? Just some ideas...

Slipstreaming is probably going to be your best bet. Check out this link for more information: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=45917

1: Check out the Registry Tweaks section of the Unattended CD/DVD guide. There are tweaks there for adding/removing these items. If you can't find them there, look at the pinned tweaks threads in this forum. There are a couple of tweak files there that will do the trick as well. 2: Take a look at the Unattended CD/DVD guide in regards to the $OEM folders. Using these folders you can have your unattended setup copy files directly to the desktop. For example, I like to have shortcuts to my favorite applications on my desktop, so my slipstream setup has a directory structure like: d:\slipstream\$OEM$\$Docs\All Users\Desktop in the Desktop folder, I put the shortcuts/files that I want to appear on my desktop. You can change the "All Users" section to "Default User" or the name of a specific user account if you don't want the shortcuts/files on all user desktops.

My vote is for old/wrong video driver. Sneaky's Driver Packs should fix you right up...

Mandrake: If you're using VMWare, you're splitting your machine resources up. Is it possible that you've allocated too much RAM to your VM session and you're swapping to disk all the time? I've done this once when I first started using VMWare and my VM session ground to a virtual halt Tybos: If you're taking that long to install, I'm with the others in saying you've maybe got a problem with the R/W media. However, I'd think you'd be able to hear the heads on your drive seeking back in forth if it was having problems reading the disc? Do you notice if the drive light is on constantly or does it cycle on/off?

This is what I have and it seems to work: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "StartButtonBallonTip"=dword:00000002 "StartMenuInit"=dword:00000002 Does this work for you?

And, if you're still having trouble or can't find the threads mentioned above, be sure to let us know and we'll help you out. Some times the "old hands" around here forget that us newbies haven't fully mastered the art of using the Search functions

The way that I've been doing this is to compress the files using WinRAR into an SFX file. An SFX (SelF-eXtracting) archive is an archive, merged with an executable module, which is used to extract files from the archive when executed. If you look at the WinRAR documentation, you'll see that you can specify commands to run before and after the extraction of your files. Also, if you use an SFX file, you can specify that the files be extracted to a temporary location and then deleted after your post extraction commands are executed. If you're not familiar with WinRAR, download a trial version at WinRAR

As part of my personal unattended setup, I make a copy of my current Outlook.pst file (so that I don't lose all of my contacts, email, etc.) and then burn a fresh UA disc right before I reinstall my system. During the unattended installation, I would like to restore this and have Outlook use it. I thought this would be as easy as copying the pst file back where I found it, but Outlook creates another copy when first started. Of course, it's easy enough to get around this (just tell Outlook to use the other file), but I was wondering if anybody has found a way to make Outlook use the original file in unattended mode. I'm not sure whether I need to use the Microsoft Custom Installation Manager to do this or whether there is another trick. I've searched the forum and Google but have not found a way that works. I found a couple of posts where people say "Oh yeah, this can be done" but then don't explain how to do it. I may not be looking in the right place, (I'm a newbie, you know) so please point me in the right direction if you can. Thanks!

Now THATS news I can use! Think I'll head over there now and give it a whirl. Might help some other poor newbie out some day. BTW, I must of missed this when I was at the UA site. Were did you get these links from?

Goggle for "PeerGuardian 2 switches" results in 79,200 hits Doing the same thing for "PeerGuardian 2 install" is better (only 454 hits), but still, would you read that many sites? I appreciate the suggestion for the UA guide, but like so newbies starting out on this subject, it can be very frustrating sometimes. I've spent many long nights pouring over the UA site and this forum and it's hard to glean information some times. The UA guide is, well, out of date on a lot of applications. As far as the forum, I search (A LOT ), but it's hard to read some of these threads that are 30-40 pages long and figure out what works. Don't get me wrong, this site ROCKS but it would be nice if we could figure out a way to integrate the "proven" solutions back into the UA guide, application installation database, registry tweak database, etc.