dexter.inside

will the next version of vLite create liter versions of boot.wim ?

Yep, after looking at it for more than 2 hours on my 22" display I become dizzy. It's very irritating on long term. And on Classic theme I had no problem even after 36 hours. I've been using computers for 13 years now and this hasn't happened to me since 2000.

every operating system made by microsoft, will be without the bloat in the server edition. Namely, Windows Server 2008 (presently named Codename Longhorn Server). I never used XP, I switched directly from 2000 to Server 2003. Some of you may know why I plan to do the same with Vista and use Server 2008 instead, as soon as I can get some of Vista components to work on it.

yup, great site

AFAIK, this may be done by altering \sources\product.ini, but the layout of this file is probably undocumented on purpose. [sku] skuid=PRODUCT_XXXX1,PRODUCT_XXXX2,... Type= ? [cmi] namespace=urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend usepkey05=true ClientServerSplit=true AnswerFileFormat=1 [BuildInfo] staged=.... Replace true from ClientServerSplit with false to include in the same image both Longhorn Server and Vista. AnswerFileFormat=1 refers to the XML schema being used, i believe 0 was legacy before build 5048, as well as usepkey05, the new encryption method <rg:licenseGroup xmlns:rg="urn:mpeg:mpeg21:2003:01-REL-R-NS"><r:license xmlns:r="urn:mpeg:mpeg21:2003:01-REL-R-NS"...>. I have no idea how to adjust skuid to match the \sources\license\ stuff, nor how that relates to staged. If anyone experiments with this, let me know.

I think MSUs have full access to the TrustedInstaller process, unlike MSIs or MSPs. It may be a way to install drivers and install/remove services without restarting, but I think we will have to wait for Visual Studio 2007 to test it out.

In Vista they have added the new stuff for Dynamic Disk functionality, so if you want RAID, do it from Device Manager. A mirror to your Vista partition is as good as any custom made driver-supported RAID 0. Fortunately, this feature works very well... it's one of the brilliant things that went into Vista straight from Server 2003. You won't be able to modify the stripe size like on nForce drivers, but the great thing is that you can create RAID on any combination of hard drives (somewhat like software RAID on linux).

Isn't this path stored in bootmgr on the source DVD ?

You might solve that by using the "take ownership" for the Admin acount feature from the Security tab.

Actually it's very simple: the uncompressed size of the partition to be deployed is known. Add to that the size of the swap file and eventually the size of the WIM (in case it gets copied locally, like when deploying from multiple CDs) and that's the total free space you need on your target partition.

Okay now, I have returned from my winter holiday... with a fresh new motivation to test vLite some more I've downloaded from Microsoft the latest build 6.0.6001.16406.061208-1900, and so far vLite 0.8 seems to be working properly with Enterprise (non-Core). If you can get a serial key from Connect, I'd recommend you try it too, it behaves better than Longhorn 5600. As for the 512 Mb limit, the quickest solution that I've come up so far is to use a previous version of the setup routine, for example the Windows PE images from builds 4074 to 5112. Of course, they have to be manually extracted and repackaged with the new ImageX, not the old xImage. The WIMGAPI.DLL function headers are the same, so refreshing this dll with the new version shouldn't be a problem. I will test how (or if) vLite interacts with the package/role installer in Longhorn Server, to make sure that it does not remove any vital files that it uses. The IIS7 Preview Program is one of the most complex betas that I've seen so far, and I think there's going to be another full year into it. Remember Codename DotNet back when Whistler was in beta? Server 2003 took a very long time to get out of beta, and 6001 is pretty much in the stage where 'Windows .NET Server 2002' was. I am very interested in Windows Server 2008, as I intend to replace my primary OS with it. The main advantages are: 1) significantly less crap than Vista 2) native Vista environment, suited for developing applications 3) the server components themselves, that are really state-of-the-art vLite should handle the rest like a charm

The best VMware to run Vista / Longhorn Server is Workstation 5.5.3 build 34685 with logging disabled, no memory swapping and independent-persistent preallocated disks (snapshots disabled).

I love the way XPize does it, so I think this is a good idea. (Tahoma rules)

That's the Windows PE 2.0 prompt... it happened to me when image #2 from boot.wim got corrupted.

For me it certainly will... let's say for example that I were to install Visual Studio 2005, Sysprep /generalize the machine, capture the WIM and pack it back in the setup. I could use a newer vLite onto it that way without having to reconstruct the image. And if the WIM gets bigger than 1 DVD, this would be really useful.

Regarding that, how about the "Create Spanned Shares" method, nuhi ? I've tried it once, exported the WIM to 2 SWM pieces and replaced them in a spanned share set from Microsoft. The setup routine reconstructs the original WIM locally on the target machine

Hey, no problem... you have every right to be acid on your own application... I'd be the same over mine. I know the time required by something like this. I just wish I had more time for "hobby programming" The worst part is when you know exactly what you want to code and don't have time to do it, gets me very annoyed. I do chemical engineering for a living and I am currently involved in 4 different projects, more or less related to programming. I've been following the NT 6.0 project since it was at build 4008, so quite naturally I have developed my own idea of doing things with it. Hopefully this winter holiday I will find a good excuse to get rid of my life and do some real coding. You're lucky to have the time to spend with vLite, I wish I could say the same...

Since they updated in v5.5.3 the virtual bios to properly support vista, it works like a breeze

I've tested it on this... and it ran surprisingly well.. the rating I estimate it to be ~1.3 for this system.

Yep, unless we can import the proper libraries from somewhere else to make the Mode 1 overlay work, we'll stick to VMR9. DirectX 10 is very very strange.. i've programmed for DirectX 9 for quite some time, and I can tell that DX10 feels totally different. They weren't kidding when they said the'll drop compatibility. Oh well.. back to the programmers' drawing board

Supports Codename Longhorn Server 5600 too... I got Enterprise Core down to 409 Mb, practically equivalent to having Windows PE 2.0 installed. I really like the way user accounts are handled in it, I always go for Administrator. nuhi, what program are you using to diff between registry data? I really could use a good one. I think the "Core" builds are the solution to my Vista problems. I have a lot of C# code tryouts to handle the builds, I'll see if I can get them altogether into a working application. Up to this point, I think I got the general idea how Microsoft originally has put together all that stuff that makes Vista what it is... I was thinking to develop something that can complement the functionality of vLite, like auto comparison between different builds and add/remove/migrate stuff. Maybe the equivalent of BartPE for the stuff in boot.wim, who knows what might come up of this? Quick hint: look at the bitmap resources in msgina.dll, they are quite intriguing...

The .NET Framework is a virtual environment that is optimized to support the latest hardware. It doesn't matter what .NET program you are running, it matters only if there are .NET assemblies available for a specific CPU extension set.

Oh, and another thing: Why when using "Apply and Rebuild" is it necessary to physically unpack the WIM to %temp%\vLite ? Wouldn't it be better to use the wimgapi.dll to mount it as RW, perform modifications on it virtually, capture the image, and then unmount it by discarding without commit ? I think that will save a great deal of disk I/O time. As for the .NET 1.0.3075, I will be preparing a report to forward to the vista development team. It's clearly not working properly - it cannot be used from VS2005, and probably you cannot use 3rd party MCE2005 (from Codename Freestyle) properly with it. But at the rate they create Windows Updates, it will be ages until I can get a proper response. Has anybody sucessfully compiled a MCE extender on Vista Ultimate?

Okay sorry about that, but if what you say is true that means they left Vista RTM with most of the non-critical bugs (they didn't even bother to fix the pending registry issues) that were posted during the Beta 2 stage. I'd say that this way it's very difficult to distinguish between whan vLite did and what Microsoft did, so I will have to use another method of investigation. My next approach will be the following: - considering the highly modular level of building Vista (inspired from XP Embedded), I think it is possible to re-extract from a Vista distribution the original primitives and packages that it's made of, each with it's full set of dependencies, registry data, install order... - doing so for the original and for the vLited edition will allow the comparison of these through diff. In a beta it's quite explainable to find missing files and erroneous registry data, but in a stable RTM that should not happen, and I am quite unsatisfied over this case by the Ultimate edition. - so, when removing stuff with vLite, one should actually remove just one or more primitives from its repository. This may be the perfect way to check if files from other primitives are also getting removed, thus distinguishing between what vLite did and what was initially bad in there. Thanks nuhi for clearing the case on this one, as I still have some sets of stuff that I will have to send to Microsoft for them to sort it out. Hope I can find a automated solution for doing what I am planning. The biggest problem is that I do have a life , otherwise C# rules. P.S. my bug reports are detailed because I am one of those beta tester geeks... Server 2003 SP2, Codename Longhorn Server and the IIS7 Preview Program, since they started it

Actually no, that's another project I am doing. nuhi points out very well that the stuff I learned about how the NT 6.0 works and how Vista components interact were not learned through the "official MSDN channels", but through what I might call "complementary methods" MSDN comes always too late for me 6) Missing dependencies in DirectPlay 9Ex \Windows\system32\dpwsock.dll and \Windows\system32\dpserial.dll are being removed by something. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectPlay\Services\{5046ab8cb6b1ce11920c00aa006c4972}\Path HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectPlay\Services\{5246ab8cb6b1ce11920c00aa006c4972}\Path I think these two should not be removed. This issue may cause problems on games designed for DirectX 10 I will make today a minimal build with everything removed to check again these for further missing dependencies.