Noise

I don't think its a matter of implementing Firefox functionalities, Martin. The problem with Internet Explorer has always been it's bloat. IE has many un-needed or seldom used "features", that only end up opening security holes or exploits. In the case of Firefox, less is more.

****, what a mess that reg file is. Dude, you see those long strings of numbers in the registry file {123....} ? Those are called SIDS, and they are different everytime you install Windows. You need to do some serious reading up on how SIDS and GUIDS are generated and used. Then, once you understand - go and edit your registry file. I'll give you a hint, your first step will be to: replace all HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1844237615-746137067-1060284298-1003\Software with HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software That registry file is a mess.

Ya and once you figure that out, you can can enjoy the blissful happiness that come with 100 PC's being built with ghost images. I hope you have a good help-desk.

The PC were probably created with a ghost image. You get weird stuff like this with imaged pc's.

Look, if you want the best - go Plextor. If you need confirmation that something else is better, you're out of luck.

Instead of manually trying to integrate hotfixes, you might want to take another approach.

If I remember correctly, when you slipstream SP2 in to your source it will create an unattend.txt file with a CDkey inside it. There was a topic about this here a long time ago. That may be the "extra" CDKey you are seeing.

@ dman, So this means we will basically have three different ways to create scripts for Windows machines. The good old fashoned CMD shell, VBS/JS/WSH and now Monad. (I won't mention the k/c shells available with Microsoft Service for UNIX - shhh ) All are capable of scripting. Monad and Cmd also have the ability of direct input. Monad and VBS seem equil in power and capabilities; ie. creating functions, nested loops, all that programming mumbo jumbo. I guess it boils down to which one is easier for the Administrator to use. Assuming notepad.exe is your editor, which one is the easiest to code for. Judging from Martins examples it seems like Monad is more intuitive. I really cant judgement call on this without experience with Monad. @ Martin, A couple questions if you please, sir. What do you see as Monad's limitations? You have extensive experience with cmd and vbs, how does Monad compare? Does Monad allow control of other PC's on the network? If so, do these PC's need Monad installed or is control through DCOM/WSH?

@ Martin, I think you'll find very few people interested in this. Personally I'd rather script in VBS. I understand this is a new command shell, and it's not just for scripting. But seriously, if I'm going to spend even 20 minutes working on a "process" to do something, I'm going to save the sucker to a file. Manually typing in a command to "find all files in C:\temp containing the string 'test' with the extention .tmp" is all well and fine. But anything more complex than that I'm going to write a full blown script. I fully acknowledge that Monad is much more powerful than the command shell. But I doubt you can do more in Monad than you can in VBS. In addition VBS seems simpler to me. In my opinion Monad is just another product that Microsoft's marketing department forced them to make. It's not really needed, but they need something similar to UNIX shell's - simply so they can say, "Windows can do that too!" Perhap's I'm missing the big picture (I usually do - LOL). I respect your opinions Martin.... what am I missing here?

Just for reference, the reg file Astalavista posted does work. The trick is getting it to load during cmdlines.txt - here's how I do it: CMDLINES.TXT: ".\SETUP.CMD" Yes, thats all I have in my cmdlines.txt, because I like my life simple. I put everything I want loaded during cmdlines.txt into that setup.cmd. SETUP.CMD: @echo off echo -----=====##### XP AutoBuild Running #####=====----- echo. echo *** Default Registry Settings for %%i in (C:\INSTALL\SETTINGS\*.reg) do regedit /s "%%i" echo *** Installing PowerToys CALL "C:\INSTALL\POWERTOY\INSTALL.CMD" ... etc etc Then, all I have to do to load a "Default User" registry setting (like numberlock) is to make a small reg file and toss it into the \install\settings directory. Simple.

@Martin, Where are your users pulling their Default Profiles from? Do you have a ntuser.dat file in your %NETLOGON% directory? If you do, then Windows will pull the default profile from the ntuser.dat file (this file is a registry hash). If you dont have a %NETLOGON%\ntuser.dat file then Windows will use the "Default User" account on the local system.

It's True Holy Crap! 3-5 YEARS!!! That's just plain stupid. It took 5 years to go from DOS to Win98. Sorry Martin... looks like it's back to the old batch files

I heard this got killed off in the next release of Windows...

I'm always interested in your scripts Martin Using the Product to install chipset drivers is an interesting approach. However, dont you just integrate the chipset drivers into your source?

@ Martin, Here's my WMI output Martin, in case you're still curious. Thanks for updating the script, I learn a lot by looking at them.

@ Urie, I suspect you just have your Windows Explorer set in "Playschool" mode. That's a term I use when your Explorer is set to not show hidden/system files and is not in details/2-pane mode. In Explorer - go into Tools / Folder Options and do the following: [un-Check] Hide extentions for known file types [un-Check] Hide protected operating system files [select] Show hidden files and folders And do yourself a favor, set your default view to "Details". @ Martin, Well, you've done it again. You last script solved a problem I've been having for ages... How to get the Motherboard serial number from my Intel motherboards using a script. Absolutely amazing, works perfectly! I get about 19 spaces after the serial number in the results. Is there a quick way to delete this white-space after the data? And if you're not busy, maybe modify the script to prompt for a machine name so I can check for serial numbers over my network?

When you try to ping the computers are you using the computers name or IP Address? Lets say you're on computerc, and you want to check the connection to computera (192.168.0.2)... Does the following hold true?: ping computera and you get a "host not found" error ping 192.168.1.2 and you get a connection If the above holds true than all you have is a simple name resolution problem. This is easily fixed by editing your hosts file. Click Start / Select Run and enter the following: notepad.exe %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts This will bring up your hosts file in notepad. Enter the name and IP Address's of the three other computers. DO NOT add the name and IP address of the computer who's hosts file you are currently editing. For example, on computerc you would add the following lines to the hosts file: 192.168.0.2 computera 192.168.0.3 computerb 192.168.0.5 computerd No reboot is neecessary after you edit this file.

Sure... we'll get right on that. You go away now!

Droopy, 1. You run this batch file before you burn your CDROM. In my batch file I call the WINNT.SIF file UNATTEND.TXT - but its the same thing. I should have simplified the batch before posting it, but I just copied and pasted what I already had (and put in a fake cdkey) 2. Yes, if you copy over winnt32.exe it should work OK. 3. Yes, it essentially puts a expiration date on your CD. Exactly. It also encrypts the Productkey entry in your WINNT.SIF file. This way, if you lend your UACD out, the borrower cant just open \I386\WINNT.SIF in notepad and steal your CDKey. Moonlight, Encrypting your CDKey on your UACD is the primary purpose here. The CDKey expiration "feature" is built in to the encryption, you must have an expiration date. I was unaware that UltraISO could "hide" files and directories. I'm curious how it does it. Does it simply set the hidden file attribute? If so, I was unaware that the CDFS (redbook) specification even had that feature. Even so, if you set explorer to show "hidden" files can't you see them?

Erik, The line in the script below determines how long the encrypted CDKey is valid: "%WORKDIR%I386\WINNT32.EXE" /ENCRYPT:"FJDTR-YFLO83-EWHG3-LPXW5-TE65T:30" /UNATTEND:"%WORKDIR% I have it set to 30 days in the above example. But you can change anywhere from 1 day to a couple months (I believe). It does have limits however, I forgot what they were. When you run the batch file, Windows uses the current systems time as a start date. So make sure your clock is correct. When you use your UACD Windows will check the PC's time (CMOS Clock) during installation. If it's past the specified number of days Windows will give an error during installation and prompt for the CDKey. So you have to make sure your the CMOS Clock is set correctly on the PC's being built. Obiviously, you can easily get around this time limitation by setting the CMOS date to something that falls within the specified time period. But very few people will realize this. And the real goal here is not to have your CDKey in plain text on your UACD.

Do you have a link to Martins' original post? At first I didn't really understand what you ment by "protecting" a UACD. Now I understand. I'll throw in my two cents on this subject. Personally, I think the most important thing to "protect" in your UACD is the CDKey that is almost certainly embeded in it. If someone gets hold of your UACD you have a lot more to worry about than them using it to install "Uncle Joes" computer. At my work we have a Volume Liscense agreement with Microsoft and thus we have one of those VLP CDKeys that hackers just love to get. This CDKey is directly traceable to my company and untimately to myself. I have nightmares of one day googleing my CDKey and getting 100's of hits. So I ALWAYS encrypt my CDKey in my WINNT.SIF and UNATTEND.TXT answer files. This only works in WinXP and 2K3 as far as I know. I use the following batch file to encrypt my CDkeys: @ECHO OFF TITLE WindowsXP SP1 UNATTEND.TXT CDKeyGen COLOR 74 MODE CON COLS=60 LINES=30 CLS ECHO [Last Edited on 11-03-2003] ECHO *** Defining Variables SET WORKDIR=%~dp0 ECHO. ECHO This will refresh the encrypted CDKey on the ECHO UNATTED.TXT file used for the XP Build. ECHO Note: This script must be run under WinXP PAUSE ECHO *** Reality Check if not exist "%WORKDIR%UNATTEND.TXT" goto ERR1 if not exist "%WORKDIR%I386\WINNT32.EXE" goto ERR2 ECHO - passed ECHO *** Updating ProductKey entry in ECHO %WORKDIR%UNATTEND.TXT with Corporate Volume License ECHO The encrypted key will be valid for *30* days. "%WORKDIR%I386\WINNT32.EXE" /ENCRYPT:"FJDTR-YFLO83-EWHG3-LPXW5-TE65T:30" /UNATTEND:"%WORKDIR%UNATTEND.TXT" ECHO. ECHO *** Complete! ECHO The results of this operation shown below: TYPE "%WINDIR%\WINNT32.LOG" PAUSE goto END :ERR1 ECHO !!! ERROR !!! ECHO %WORKDIR%UNATTEND.TXT was not found. ECHO Please make sure this file is in the same ECHO directory as this script before executing. PAUSE goto END :ERR2 ECHO !!! ERROR !!! ECHO %WORKDIR%I386\WINNT32.EXE was not found. ECHO Please make sure the I386 structure is OK. PAUSE goto END :END ECHO *** End of script And no, that's not my real CDKey in the script. That would have really dumb

Setup capture programs like SMS Installer, Wise InstallMaster/Installation System, etc, don't capture device drive installations well at all. It may work, it may not. But even worse it may work just barely - causing problems down the line you weren't expecting. The reason is that the internal ID's (PNPID, GUID's, etc) for each PC varies. Even for identical hardware. If your device driver has a silent installation routine, then you must use that. After installation (and a reboot, just to clean things up) then you can do a capture of all the other stuff you need to install.

OMG I think I modified my registry!!!! That's a binary file!

No. It's simply because the start command expects the first set of quotes to define the title. It doesn't change the title of the command prompt, in fact I don't know what it does. What I do know is that if you don't use it this way you'll run into problems. Especially if your first set of quotes is used to specify the program name and you need to use quotes in that programs command line.

I have to agree, this is great stuff... Hell, why did I ever bother taking that vbs scripting class, I still use batch files /runs off to check Martin's blog...