dexter.inside

I am as stuck in the same bureaucratic mess as you are

We're in for some big money, my friends and I think we love money at least as much as Microsoft Also, let's not forget the concept of Software Assurance itself, it's always easier to milk companies than end-users

That's why I love Microsoft, their mistakes are my profits OEMs, rejoyce!

They don't have the same name, one is *1.swm and the other is *2.swm

What does the event viewer say? Post your logs from dns server manager Is your network being choked by high levels of traffic?

I'm quite happy with my vlited Vista SP1 on eeePC

Actually I am doing something wrong, I am bypassing msiexec and the TrustedInstaller in order to componentize my stuff (let's call it unorthodox slipstreaming). If VMware can do it, why can't I ? Anyways, there are some pieces of software that break sysprep due to poor architectural vision, and that makes me very sad. The very reason for me to go over MS installers.

WPD is "Windows Portable Device" Driver Model. Try to manually reinstall the Mobile Device Center from here

1) CABs are no longer used for driver storage. It's faster to install drivers from a uncompressed file repository 2) What you call "windows installation" is actually a straightforward wim decompression onto a target partition, followed by the last stage of a sysprep (mini-setup). Its only real bottleneck is the linear read speed of the medium containing the WIM. 2) Reducing compression would actually increase install time in some conditions. A larger WIM would take more time to read from a DVD.

How about Windows Server 2008 Core ? That would work gracefully.

Yep, very well said

Make a batch script with a FOR in it to execute the same sequences for each image (what you do between mountrw and unmount+commit)

Yes, Acronis does have a backup/recovery system using a hidden partition. Instead of making a .tib file, it saves the contents of a partition as raw data on that hidden acronis partition. No big deal, and is quite useful for laptops.

You are forgetting that most users don't even grasp the notion of 'recovery' for their OS

QoS is a very good solution