PT145

Sorry for not getting back to you folks sooner, in the process of changing jobs. Anyway, thanks for the input. Knowing your experience saves un-needed possible troubleshooting later on. Again, thanks!

Just a question using quotation marks. As I'm working my through the unattended process I've noticed that instances occur where in the Unattended guide quotes are used for some items when setting up the winnt.sif file but in the ref.chm where further information is provided about an action and examples are given quotation marks are ommitted. Which should take precedence? Have folks who created the guide made corrections thae Microsoft has just not updated in the ref.ehm? Thanks!

mmarable, thanks for the info. I didn't know about VMserver. Anyway, read some reviews over the weekend and bought Parallels Workstation. Gave up on VMPlayer and EasyVMX. Also, for anyone interested, found some info posted by "jbm" which though I'll never be able to do a complete unattend will still permit me not to keep looking for the proof CD since my XP Home is an upgrade. Into my integration of Home and XP copied the directory structure of my ME disk. First had created a folder with same title as the ME disk and copied everything into it but it didn't work. Since no folders on the ME disk duplicate any on the XP Home disk folders I just put everything into the root. Created an ISO with NLite and everything worked when I pulled it into Parallels. Now I'm going to start deleting stuff out of the ME stuff I copied to see if I can slim the thing down and only leave the directories and the files it looks for. So hence forth I will do semi-unattended installs but still better than before. PT145

I'm using most current version of VMWare Player. Used EasyVMX to create various virtual machines. VMWare Player had no problem seeing my EasyVMX files. The unattended guide recommends testing your setup in a virtual machine instead of wasting burning CDs. I've created an ISO of the integration of my Windows XP Home Edition and SP2. Nothing else added so far. The problem I'm having is that I can't figure out how to get the ISO loaded into the VMWare Player working as a virtual machine once EasyVMX files pulled in. VMWare Player seems to look for an operating system to load only from, in my case, my DVD/CD drive, ZIP drive, and thumb drive of all things. There doesn't seem to be anyway to point it to the location of the ISO file. Also, while in the VM it won't let me enter any keystrokes. The moment I try it just goes through a cycle where it eventually tells me it couldn't find an operating system to load in any of the aforementioned drives. What am I doing wrong? On a side note, what has happened to the EasyVMX website? I have not been able to get into it. Is it down or have they just folded? Finally, has anyone had any experience with the Parallels Workstation (http://www.parallels.com), looks to be similiar to VMWare Workstation but only seems to cost $49.99 downloaded. Also seems to some how work with some of your physical devices. Would it be a good alternative to VMWare Workstation? PT145

Greetings all, hope you had a nice weekend! I spent mine trying to narrow down what updates I will need to get that have come out since WinXP Home SP2 became available. Again, I’m trying to make my XP Home work unattended before I give up and buy a full XP Pro. To put together my list I went to the MS TechNet site and used their Search By Product form: Product = Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack = Windows XP Service Pack 2 [Didn’t check the box for “Show only bulletins … recent update.] [Did check boxes for “Critical” “Important” “Moderate” and “Low”] Bulletin release date: “All” This search produced 84 items. Then out of curiosity I ran the above search exactly the same way except for Windows XP Professional. This search produced 85 items with 84 items being exactly identical to the XP Home run. Put this information into a spreadsheet as the baseline (included the XP Pro item from above). By leaving that one box unchecked above it showed what had been replaced and by what. Now I merged RyanVm’s Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack Version 2.1.1 as best I could. As a double check against Microsoft I also used RyanVM’s Update Pack Changelog to see what had been replaced. I could be wrong but suspect RyanVm’s product is also geared towards XP Pro. Next I merged the August Full release of AutoPatcher though there was no way to figure out what replaced what but nonetheless was very helpful. Finally, and again the list was geared to XP Pro SP2, I merged Incroyable HULK’s one stop post for Windows critical updates as of today. Naturally, there were some differences between the sources, as was to be expected. Using Microsoft as the baseline, since one would think they should know what they’re doing, the differences include some KBs being omitted; others included even though they had been replaced; and some listed but not on the baseline. One more thing I intend to do, once I get my virtual machine going, is visit the Microsoft Update site using a CD with only SP2 applied but with no post SP2 updates, I want to see the list they generate. But as a result of the exercise today, I have more questions. 1. As I firm up what the SP2 post updates are can I just install them or do I also have to install the ones that had been replaced because they might leave something behind or just need to be there to get moded or update somehow? 2. I have what looks like some legacy stuff showing as being installed prior to SP2. Probably showing up because as I mentioned in my earlier post I’ve been doing continuous upgrades basically without a clean install. Now my question is can I uninstall any of this without a major breakdown since I thought when SP2 came out it included everything prior to it in its install? I was going to try to upload my spreadsheet but system didn't like Excel file extension. If anyone is interested to see it how can I do it. What file extensions are acceptable?

I would like to thank everyone who responded to my questions. Your comments are very constructive and I will be checking each one of them out. As recommended, my plan is to start slowly and as each iteration works out to continue building upon it until I have the CD I want. You've answered my main concern and that is that I can continue doing this with the upgrade version of the XP disk so you've saved me some dollars! As I've been researching this topic I have been collecting the information and software recommend and have been saving it to a folder I titled "slipstream" for easy access. It's just that, and I don't fault the authors, some of us have varying levels experience or should I say inexperience and some authors write at different levels and assume the audience can fill in the blanks on what could be construed as simple basic stuff. It's those blanks sometimes that often require clarification and I appreciate you taking the time to help me. This looks to be a valuble and fun exercise to do and I hope to contribute later on how things work out. Regards to all!

Greetings Everyone! After reading anything I could get my hands on I've decided to attempt slipstreaming a CD but must admit I'm nervous as heck about it. My situation is that for years I've progressed through the upgrade path where I started with Win95, then up'd to 98, 98SE, ME, XP Home, XP Home SP1 to presently running XP Home SP2 but along the way never did a clean install. As you've guessed things are starting to get unstable and don't know how I've managed this long. Anyway, my questions pertain to the Unattended XP guide hosted by msfn. I've made a CD following as much as possible the instructions in the Beginner Introduction section but only integrated SP2 into XP and did not apply any of the hotfixes, drivers, etc. Ran into problem with my Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 not wanting to make a bootable disk so used CDImage to make the entire disk an ISO image. Then tried installing it into a virtual machine made using EasyVMX. Though I set up a very plain winnt.sif file to do an unattended install still ran into some minor and then major problem. Since my XP Home was an upgrade I was asked to prove I had purchased one of the earlier versions, no problem after I produced one. Then, even though I was going to use a virtual machine I decided to manually format and now for some reason it asked for SP2 CD which I didn't have. Anyway, I digress. Here are my questions. 1. My impression is you can do this for XP Home though the guide seems to be directed towards XP Pro? 2. Given my experience, it's probably better to do this with a non-upgrade type version of XP? 3. In the Finalizing and Testing the CD section there seem to be no instructions on how to get the integrated files into the vitual machine without burning them first to a CD. Thought the whole object of the virtual machine was not to waste burning CDs? What I suspect is that the best thing to do is probably just go out and buy a retail version of XP Pro and just avoid these problems entirely? Or, would a full version of XP Pro OEM also work and be less expensive. I'd like to tinker with XP since I don't think Vista is going to be ready for prime time anytime soon. Any comments would be appreciated!