Noise

The only way to do what you are thinking is to logon to a domain and use "Roaming Profiles". If your D: drive is NTFS you will also have problems with file and folder permissions after you reinstall. Again, you will need another computer on your network and set it up as a Active Directory (or NT4) Domain Controller - complete with DHCP and DNS and all the other headaches that go with it. Trust me, you're not the first person to have this idea. But you can go ahead and waste a ton of time trying to get this to work without a domain.

Always uninstall QoS Packet Scheduler! This is another stupid idea developed by Microsoft for a problem nobody has. What it does is limit your bandwidth of your internet connection. Say you're downloading a 100MB file from another computer on your LAN. With QoS installed it will take 20% longer to download that file. I suggest you read up on this little "feature": http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;EN-US;q316666 It is broken, fix it.

Setting [GuiUnattended] ProfilesDir="D:\Profiles" in winnt.sif doesn't work? It should. Changing this value in the registry after installation of XP is NOT recommended. The Default User and All User profiles are hard-coded during setup, not to mention the Administrator account. However, you CAN change it after setup by editing the machine (HKLM) registry settings. I also believe TWEAKUI can do this too, perhaps even Group Policy Editor. But again, I wouldn't do it this way, you're just asking for weird problems later on.

I've been a System Administrator at a fortune 500 company for over 12 years. My advice to you is change your major. Unless you already have a "in" (like your Dad's a CEO, or your uncle Joe is the head of MIS) there is no future in supporting computers in America. Too much competition, both with other countries and too many people in the feild. The market is saturated with people (mostly incompetent) from the dot.com boom of the late 90's. You want a good job, a house, a boat and to be able to support 2.5 kids? Get into another field, like construction - something that cant be outsourced. Don't say I didn't warn you.

You can also use GreenMachines awesome batch file. It's amazingly tight for a batch file. Nice work on the VBscript too. @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION FOR /F "TOKENS=1 DELIMS= " %%A IN ('REG QUERY HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}') DO ( SET TEMP1=%%A SET TEMP2=!TEMP1:~99,38! SET TEMP3=!TEMP2:~-1! IF "!TEMP3!"=="}" ( IF NOT "!TEMP2!"=="{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}" ( SET REGSTR1=HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\!TEMP2!\Connection SET REGSTR2=HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\!TEMP2! REG ADD !REGSTR1! /v ShowIcon /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f REG ADD !REGSTR2! /v IPAutoconfigurationEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f ) ) ) Very Nice.

@prathapml What's a SLP'ed OEM version? Does there indeed exist an OEM version of Windows XP that doesn't need activation? Just curious.

If I may add a little comment. Since you were so nice in posting this, I'll give you a very helpful hint Make variables for your special folders at the beginning of your batch file: SET ALLUSER=%USERPROFILE%\..\All Users SET DEFUSER=%USERPROFILE%\..\Default User SET CURUSER=%USERPROFILE% USERPROFILE is a environmental variable present on all current versions of Windows. By referencing your directories this way you eliminate compatability problems in the future. For example, your script wouldn't work on my setup because I change the default profiles location in the winnt.sif (unattend.txt) file: [GuiUnattended] ProfilesDir="%systemroot%\Profiles" This will make your code much more portable and it will work on difrferent languages too. Thus instead of: DEL "c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start menu\Set Program Access and Defaults.lnk" You would use: DEL "%ALLUSER%\Start menu\Set Program Access and Defaults.lnk"

Wow, IMHO this is the perfect type of setup, it's exactly what I do - almost exactly. Kinda scary really (checks PC for trojans) I'm curious about a few programs you're installing... I notice you're using Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0.2 CE - how is that working for you? Is it the same as the regular USA version of Acrobat Reader 6.01 that has been updated to 6.02? Does it use the Brittish spelling of words like colour? What is ActivePorts? What is the Image resizer? Have you ran into any problems deleting the asp, support and help accounts? Thanks again for posting this. Very nice. Very professional. You're hired.

I'd get the MX-510, it's a great gaming mouse. The 310 isnt that good of a gaming mouse, but it's really cheap.

Ummm... The first thing I'd check is the CMOS setup. Make sure your BIOS doesn't have "Power management" or "ACPI" disabled.

LOL, Would you prefer the term "MasterBatcher" ?

I had to comment on this one, Thanks GreenMachine! That batch file is awesome. I've needed that for years, but was too lazy to do it myself. The way you write those for loops and use the delims and tokens is amazing. I've been writing batch files since DOS 2, but I have to say, you are the batch master!

You just cant copy registry hives like that. There is embeded security in the key's that will really screw up the creation of new accounts.

All these PC's have floppy drives, right? Well, then do it the professional way and use a unattended automated XP installation with the winnt.sif on a floppy disk. Boot from the auto-build CDROM and have the winnt.sif in the floppy drive as the CD boots. The CD will read the winnt.sif off of the floppy drive automatically and setup the system unattended. A quick modification of the winnt.sif using notepad and you move on to the next PC. You will need to write some scripts and load some registry settings during this procedure, so you do have a bit of work in front of you. If all you are familiar with is windows 98 then you are in for a world of pain. XP isnt 98 and cant be hacked nearly so easily. If you have 120 PC's to do, my advice is to use active directory to lock down the systems and use RIS over the network to deploy the PC's. Setup the PC's to use PXE to boot over the network. It's a 1.5 day setup for the infrastructure and maybe another day to install all the PC's. On the plus side of this, if you need to rebuild a PC later on it will be a snap.

I suspect that the Central European version of 6.02 uses the Queen's English. You know, where color is spelled colour and everyone runs around drunk telling each other "pip pip cheerio"!

LOL, Free tech support - FROM INDIA ! The Indian tech support Microsoft uses is absolutely useless. You will be on hold for an eternity. When you finally get through they won't know what the hell your talking about. I've had MSDN for years (not cheap) because when I need help, I need to talk to someone SMART. Now that they started using Indians MSDN is near useless to me. They make you go through 3 teirs of support before they "escalate" your call to the US. I'm not being racist here, I'm stating a fact. Don't waste your time.

I did this the other day. Almost cried. But I caught the error right after setup repartitioned. I was left with an empty formated partition. Luckly I didn't write any data to the drive yet. If you have written new data to the drive - your data is gone. If Windows started it's copy process - your data is gone. I spent $30_US online for a program called Active@ Partition Recovery. This got my data back, after a few emails back and forth with their tech support (they respond fast). Good luck

Yes, I agree Alanoll, but that's not how it's been in the past. The deployment manager in 2003 server was way better than the one on XP. The documentation for unattend.txt files was way better too.

Could someone post that deploy.cab from longhorn? Please? XL-DJK95355? Please don't make me download 600MB for a 5KB file

You Spanish sure have a lot of time on your hands.

Whoohoo Finally I pay over $2K a year for MSDN - they better have the **** service pack. And it's the ISO, very nice.

I take issue with your policy of removing unauthorized links to Service Pack 2 people may post. This draconian strategy is unnecessary both politically and leagely. You are breaking no Microsoft rules or any other rules by "helping to propagate" this Service Pack 2 release. Deleting links to bittorrents and even wares site where this update can be obtained serves no purpose. Indeed, unless the link is erronius, you are doing a disservice to this community. /there, I used a lot of big words

It's not about advantages, it's for backwards compatability. Waaaaayyyy backwards compatability - don't forget, you can set associations in win.ini too. Isn't that nice? It's enough to make your head explode.

They make 900MB CD's? Unpossible!

Curious. I just checked my registry for one of these "superhidden" registry entries. My AppInit_DLLs value says InstallHook.dll is this a trojan or something I need to be worried about?