Noise

Anyone know of a way to set "Password Never Expires" in the cmd file for the new account? And no, it's not the "/PASSWORDCHG:NO" command.

Put the "Title In Quotes" before the /wait statement, not after it. Looks like you're quote refences a line from a registry file (judging from the double backslashes "\\"). Try loading up the registry file and looking at the results in regedit directly. Make sure it ends up the way you expect. I.e.: %windir%\system32\cmd /c start "ActiveSync Install" /wait "%CDROM%\Apps\activesync\setup.exe" /s

@smokinggunman, That's very nice use of the date variable, that will come in extremely handy in the future! Thanks. Couple of questions though. Will your script work on Windows 2000? Why are you running nlsfunc?

I used Wise InstallMaster to do this a few months ago. It was a pain in the a** to get it working right, took me about 2 solid days of work. I was capturing an Oracle client installation at the same time. The Wise product is what Microsoft SMS Installer is based on. It's works better than SMS Installed on capturing installations on XP.

Interesting. I have this too. The file is very suspicious, it has no embeded file version, company, internal name, etc... anywhere in the file. There's also another suspicious file in the bin directory (next to the libeay32.dll) called ssleay32.dll. This file is encrypted with no identifing information.

I load the following reg file during cmdlines.txt: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\srvWiz] @=dword:00000000 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\tips] "Show"=dword:00000000

Argh they make this more and more difficult every revision. I hate InstallShield setups. OK, here's what I found... Run setpoint231enu.exe and it will create a Disk1 in your temp directory with the following files: data1.cab data1.hdr engine32.cab layout.bin setup.exe setup.ibt setup.ini setup.inx Now... I copy these files to another directory, and then cancel the installation. When I run setup.exe from the copied directory it runs and installs fine. If I copy these setup files to another computer and try to run it, the setup asks for data2.cab. So starting the setup program and then immediately canceling it puts data2.cab (or its equivalent) somewhere.

I use the freeware opensource SpamBayes. It works great, it's fairly fast, and it's free. It only works on Outlook versions (all) not Ourlook Express.

You're a bad man for downloading copywrited material. A very bad man! You go away now.

Inside a batch file you can use the %CD% variable for the current working directory. The %CD% variable isnt sugesting CDROM, it's short for Current Directory. The %CDROM% variable works only during the installation phase, if I recall correctly. The %CD% variable only exists in XP and above I believe. What I use in my batch files is the %~dp0 command. Like this: SET MAINDIR=%~dp0 ECHO %MAINDIR% To launch a file in the same directory as the batch file use: %~dp0SETUP.EXE You can also call a file in a relative subdirectory: %~dp0FIREFOX\SETUP.EXE Notice the lack of a backslash after %~dp0. %~dp0\SETUP.EXE is incorrect because %~dp0 includes the trailing backslash (although if you put it in on accident it still seems to work).

I don't think there is a way to disable these extra confirmations. I sure wish there were, they drive you crazy when your developing boot cdroms and like like. Have to tried using regmon to see if there is a hidden registry key for this?

For STEAM games by Valve Software (Counter Strike, Half-Life, Half-Life2, etc.): To backup: Backup your STEAM directory and all game subdirectories under it. (warning: this will at least a couple gigs) Use regedit to backup HKLM\SOFTWARE\Steam and HKCU\Software\Steam To Restore: Restore your STEAM directory and all game subdirectories under it. Restore your HKLM\SOFTWARE\Steam and HKCU\Software\Steam using the .reg files you created Create a shortcut to steam.exe Verify you are connect to the internet Start steam and enter your password Pretty simple actually.

You don't really need to directly edit the registry to do this. I always find it easier to use the old fashoned way: Open Explorer/Tools/Folder Options/{File types}. Select the entry for ISO and click "Advanced". Click 'New' and name it "Open with Nero" In the Application area enter: "C:\Program Files\Ahead\Nero\nero.exe" /w "%1"

Have you tried Windows built in Remote Assistance? Start/Help/"Invite a friend to connect to your computer with Remote Assistance" Just follow the wizard.

The Move command is really flakey. It take a lot of experimentation to get it right. You'll probably be better off just copying it over and deleting the install directory later.

Ah, I will test this later when I get a chance, I was just wondering if you already tested it.

Just curious... Has anyone tested this with user profiles. For example, Install it under the local administrator account - then logon under another account? Does it work? I presume administrator rights are required for installation of the customized firefox. Does the installer check for admin rights?

McAfee 8.0i *sigh* Bloated and slow Wish we used Kaspersky

Rogue, I'd be interested in seeing that machine startup script you have there And you're very correct about Mark Minasi's work, fine stuff.

Wow, this is almost exactly how I setup my XP installation procedure for my company. I like the cut of your jib chekm8 Here's how I do it. Use the freeware GDISK.EXE to format your initial partition as fat16. Instead of 1.C use the disks volume label. Use gdisk like this in DOS: GDISK 1 /MBR /WIPE /Y GDISK 1 /CRE /PRI /FOR /-32 /V:XPREADY /Q /Y The above two lines will wipe any data from the hard disk, create a single/active 2GB FAT16 partition on the drive, and set the volume lable to something you can identify in your scripts after rebooting. As for converting this 2GB FAT16 partition to NTFS? Make sure your unattend.txt has this in it and it will convert the small fat16 partition to a single huge ntfs partition (cut-and-pasted the two sections because I'm lazy).

Don't use Ghosted images - period. Especially in a diverse hardware environment like yours. You are just asking for weird problems down the line with ghosted images. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about, I've been rolling out Windows to my fortune 500 corp since win 3.0. Over the years I've tried all the deployment methods. When you ask questions like this, in forums like these, you'll get a lot of people who insist a imaged drive is the best approach. It isn't, it sucks. It's not just changing the IDE controller, it the imaged systems HAL type (single cpu, multi-threading P4, dual processor?) and PnP setup, etc. I could go on and on. The best way, and the most professional IMHO, is to use the unattend.txt method downloaded from a network installation point (not a cdrom). This is pretty much exactly the setup you have now, and it is the best. You may not like the way it is layed out, or think it's "messy" but it isn't. It's the best solution. You don't like updating the driver directory? Tough, it's part of the job to qualify new hardware. You're not supporting Mac's or Sun's, you knew PC's were dangerous when you took the job With a scripted network installation it takes only minutes to update the baseline build to incorporate new drivers, hotfixes, applications, etc. Where it can take hours to update images.

Some people just like slimmed down versions of XP. It's a trade off between compatability and security/performance. In the long run, it all depends on what you use your PC for. You can NLite the hell out of your PC and make a gaming machine noticeably faster. But you'll run into problems later if you try to, lets say, share a directory on the network. To each their own.

from the commandline: regsvr32.exe /i %windir%\system32\cabview.dll

Oops, nevermind, you were talking about tooltips. Don't know about them. Maybe just don't hover over them?

Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced Modify or create, "EnableBalloonTips" and set the Value to "0". To restore set the Value to "1". But I don't recommend you do this. there is some valuable information that gets presented in baloontips, like low disk space and email notifications. Other programs use it too, so you might want to reconsider.