alantangcs

The easiest way to test if setup has read your AutoUnattend.xml is to put the product key in (using WSIM of course). The product key is one of the first things setup asks you. If it doesn't ask you, then you know setup is using your AutoUnattend.xml.

WOOT! I've fixed it! Basically, in case any of you run into this problem, it's to do with the disk space you have. I logged into XP, removed the page file on the first partition of the drive (Vista naughtily assumes that the first partition of the disk will have enough space to copy and extract it's files. When it doesn't, it'll fail with the obscure message that it can't apply the unattended settings for pass (null). It's (null) because it technically failed before it even had the chance to start the setting up of the OS). When I've freed up enough space, Vista installed fine with no problems. phew... All good now.

Ok guys, this has really got me stumped. Could anyone help me out? Here's my AutoUnattend.xml file, placed into the root of the Vista ISO. The answer file is generated by WAIK RTM and the ISO is built with oscdimg. I've already got Xp installed on my laptop and I've mapped the drives as follows: S: Page file and boot partition T: Temporary files C: Vista OS D: Vista Apps E: XP OS F: XP Apps G: Profiles Z: DVD drive I know the ISO works because I set up a virtual machine and installed Vista on it. Then I thought I had the perfect image so I burnt it to DVD and tried it on a real computer - my laptop. First I tried booting from the DVD and installing. After it has finshed extracting files, it would throw an error "Windows could not apply the unattend settings in pass (null)". There are no more details, no indication as to what may be wrong, nothing. Next, I tried to run setup from within XP. Same thing happens. So the thing that has me stumped is, what's going on differently between the laptop and the VM that's causing the unattend settings not to be applied?

Ok I'm getting the same problem too. At the worst, you could remove those junctions and recreate them. I did the following steps. 1. Use mklink /J "My Videos 2" "G:\Profiles\Vista\Alan Tang\Videos" to create "My Videos 2". 2. Change the icon to that junction by right-clicking on it in explorer and choosing properties. All the icons that the original short cuts use reside in Windows\System32\imageres.dll 3. While you're in the properties, make it hidden as well since the original ones are hidden. 4. Test out the new links. If they work, delete the original and rename "My Videos 2" to just "My Videos". Seems to work good for me. The interesting thing is. The moment you rename them to "My Videos" "My ___", Vista will take over them... by that I mean, they will no longer be normal shortcuts where you can edit the target and all that but will resume the behaviour of the original links. Now, I don't know what will happen when you add a new user to the computer. You may have to fix up the links that Vista automatically creates for them as well. This could get annoying.

I had a quick try on my VM last night. Those My Pictures and My Music links seem to work for me. Have you tried to do a "dir" in \VistaUsers\footswitch\Music as well? Thanks for your reply above. I shall give that a try tonight and try out your issue more thoroughly as well.

Still working on my Vista Unattended. Here's a little gotcha/bug with the Vista setup. I used the profile path G:\Profiles\Vista in the answer file (G:\Profiles\XP is for the XP Documents and Settings - I'm dual botting). However, in the VM where I installed vista, I perused the hard drives and found G:\Profiles\Users instead. I think this is a bug with the Vista setup. Has anyone else seen the same problem when using not placing the Users directory on the root of the drive? Also, I noticed that in the registry HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell folders the values for the paths are all for C: as they would be without the customized paths. That is, the profiles folder key is still C:\Users, even though Vista has been set up with G:\Profiles\Users. I go into explorer and all the Documents, Music, Pictures links work correctly. Here's even more strangeness... the environment variables are all set up correctly according to my unattend. I.e. %UserProfiles% is pointing to G:\Profiles\Vista!!! Even though that folder doesn't even exist? So in summary, for the user profiles folder: - Physical hard drive : G:\Profiles\Users - Registry settings : C:\Users - Environment variables: G:\Profiles\Vista Anyone experiencing the same issues?

Hi all, I'm probably not adding any new knowledge to this post, but I've been tracking this discussion as I too am very eager to install Vista on my new laptop (coming soon) with Program Files and User Profiles on separate partitions. After reading all your responses, I *think* this might be the closest I could get to have ProgramFiles, ProgramData and Users on their own separate partitions. Let me stress that I haven't tested this yet so I wouldn't recommend anyone try this until someone's confirmed it works. 1. Use WSIM to create an answer file to install ProgramData and ProgramFiles on their own partitions. 2. Install Vista. 3. Boot into Vista and XCOPY C:\Program Files to another partition. XCOPY has options to preserve permissions and file ownerships which I'm not 100% a copy in Windows Explorer does. 4. Change the keys in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\* to point to the new locations (including Common Files. 5. At this point it's probably worth a reboot to see if the programs are working properly. 6. As someone mentioned before, some default Windows programs are installed with a reference to "%systemdrive%\Program Files" so I'll probably have to manually change some links. On a fresh install of Vista, there shouldn't be too many. Also this step is optional because of step 10 (see later). 7. Again, reboot and try some default apps like WMP. 8. Boot into a BartPE CD and *rename* "C:\Program Files" to something else (I wouldn't delete it yet). This step is probably necessary because if you are in Vista, some files will be in use and you will not be able to touch the folder. 9. Boot back into Vista and make sure some programs work. It's probably not possible to test every single program in Windows so I recommend step 10. 10. Create a symbollic link on C: to your new Program Files, Program Data and Users folders on other partitions. The reasoning for this is, if I missed anything in step 6, at least C:\Program Files exists and links to a location that contains the actual files. Also, you never know what naughty developers might hardcode paths in their setup files. 11. Use Vista for a few weeks and when I'm happy with the system, delete the renamed Program Files folder on C:. If I've missed anything, please do let me know. After I've tried this on my laptop, I'll let everyone know my results.