gfincher

BDD 2007 Released to the Web! The final version of BDD 2007 for Vista and 2007 Office Deployment has been releaesd to the web at: http://www.microsoft.com/desktopdeployment This free set of tools, procedures, and guidance sets the bar for unattended deployment of Windows Vista and 2007 Office. BDD 2007 supports small to large enterprises. glenn fincher

Volume licenses are available (and reasonable) for as few as 5 seats. You might want to look into the details of the program that Microsoft announced yesterday here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2...ncementsPR.mspx As well as the new Microsoft Incentives website: https://www.microsoftincentives.com/ They are REALLY offering some interesting reasons for Small Businesses to buy in to their various volume license programs, as the bulk of the worlds computers ARE indeed running in small to medium businesses. Hope this helps! gfincher

Actually... as that KB mentions... and I quote from the article: "QChain.exe functionality is included in all Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 product updates that use Update.exe and that were released since May 18, 2001." Qchain shouldn't be needed w/Server 2003 or XP SP2 patches. Gfincher

What I mean is that a company licenses either Office Standard or Office Professional for a certain # of users == seats. And... that installing from an Office Professional install point to Office Standard users is not allowed by license. License compliance is a huge issue in most orporations today; some industries require item, not just software vendors. And... yes... you should leave them as separate install sources, but this sure complicates your install structure. I would definitely recommend looking into the LIS method of installation. Details here: Taking Advantage of a Local Install Source

Since you are using Admin install points, I assume that you also are using Volume License media in a corporate environment? If so, then you do know that you may have licensing issues if you use Office Professional installs to what would be your Standard licensed seats? I would recommend that you move away from an Admin install point and copy the contents of the CD's to two separate shared folders & then get the benefit of the Local Install Source (LIS) method of installation. LIS is the recommended method of install for Office 2003 & will reportedly be the ONLY method of install for future versions of Office. The compressed cab files take up less room on the server anyway, and LIS improves the "patch story". Don't waste time trying to build what may be an unsupported and unsupportable deployment mechanism. my .02 ... gfincher

Read this... http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=891275&SD=tech RIS requires DHCP. If you want to install XP from a server share using a DOS-based network boot disk, then the commands to connect to a share & install XP from a share would look something like: net use M: \\servername\sharename m:\i386\winnt32.exe /s:m:\i386 /unattend:m:\i386\winnt.sif There are other details such as disk partitioning & formatting that also need to be considered, but... there are ample other posts with those details. gfincher

Actually, IF this computer is at least XP SP2, then NO password is better than a "strong" password IF the computer is connected to a network. XP SP2 blocks any account w/o a password from anything except console logons. This is becoming the standard recommendation for the admin account, but it would also be useful to create a LUA account to use for normal use. Follow the advice at Aaron Margosis Blog blog for the how to & the current advice. gfincher

I suppose that you got it figured out? Want to share? I was going to suggest looking at the command line for Ghost32.exe: ghost32 -clone,mode=restore,src=@MCghostme,dst=1 -sure -rb "@MCghostme" specifies the name of the multicast session to join. gfincher

Look at: unattended.msfn.org for this information - it basically involves creating a $OEM$\$$\system32 structure as part of your source for setup. But.. there is a different location for this folder if you are installing from a network share or CD/DVD OR RIS. So consult the above. gfincher

Check out this thread on the CD911 Forums for the PXE & TFP portion - basically, you need to build your WinPE 2005 image from Server 2003 media: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=9685 And... Microsoft has a "solution accelerator" called BDD which has a working example of what you are looking for regarding scripts & a working implementation of using Ghost32 & WinPE as you mentioned. Look at the scripts related to "Lite Touch Deployment". The current version of BDD is 2.0, but a newer 2.5 version is soon to be released. Glenn Fincher

Your command string looks correct. To troubleshoot, remove the "-" from "/qb-" to see what the error is. Also, when you ran the Custom Installation Wizard to create your MST, did you include a Product ID & check the EULA checkbox? If you don't do that it will silently fail. Hope this helps! gfincher

I tried it too - dies at line 12 which is the aBiosString = Split(UCase(oFSO.OpenTextFile(sOutputFile,1,False).ReadAll),vbCrlf) line... but... I'm just a script hacker, so don't know how to fix it... Interesting thread though...

So... I guess that I am missing something... why is this easier than just clicking on the 'Click here for support information" link and then the resulting URL that shows up in the "Support Info" box? We are in Add/Remove Programs anyway to look up the hotfix #? Always looking for an easier way to do what we all need to do, but... XPAddict

If you have Ghost Corporate Edition , then you should have ghost32.exe that would allow you to use WinPE (or Bart's PE) to boot into a 32-bit environment w/support for most NIC's. Also, w/Ghost Corp, you could get totally away from floppies using the Ghost Boot partition or Ghost virtual boot partiton. Hope this helps. XPAddict