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

I suspect that the install is failing because of a path problem since you don't specify the path to the MST file. Take off the trailing "-" in the following line: REG ADD %KEY%\000 /V 1 /D "%systemdrive%\install\Applications\Office2003\setup.exe TRANSFORMS=Unattended.MST /qb-" /f And see what the error is... You also could follow the instructions here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistan...1717621033.aspx replacing any of the network location information with correct locations on your DVD. Editing the setup.ini file w/MST & chaining in the SP1 hotfixes using this method makes it easy to add in othe hotfixes in later builds, and also enables the Local Install Source for Office 2k3. Glenn Fincher

I have run: AdAware SE 1.05 w/latest def Spybot w/latest def MS AntiSpyware w/latest def I am now (since entries showed up) running PrevX Home I use CA EZ-Armor Firewall/AntiVirus combination. In Regedit, my local admin account is the owner of the data (viewed in Security dialog), and has Full Control access to entries(there are three identical entries). All of the entries also have a further section, which resolves in a key with my user SID as a keyname. So the entire registry segment reads like: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFT繗ARE\Microsoft\Protected Storage System Provide繲偑邐*Default縪偑*Local Machine縪偑Data\S-1-5-21-3292650235-516276246-1282138258-1008] I have booted into BartPE & attempted to remove the offending sections by importing the NTUSER.DAT - I have also done so while logged on locally as an Admin & Loading the NTUSER.DAT hive. Next step is probably going to be trashing my current user profile (deleting user & profile) & recreating a same named user. Since the errant information is contained in the HKCU hive, that should get rid of it, but... you know how it is when you would rather know HOW to fix something instead of brute forcing it (hesitation to wipe & reload!) I may try Files & Settings Xfer wizard to dump important installed software reg info and then do the delete user/profile. XPAddict

In the last several weeks, I have somehow got several instances of the following entry in my registry: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFT繗ARE] [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFT繗ARE\Microsoft] [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFT繗ARE\Microsoft\Protected Storage System Provide繲偑邐*Default縪偑*Local Machine縪偑Data] Viewed in Notepad - the erroneous characters are displayed as [] (blocks) As you may can see, there are some otherwise unprintable characters in the keys. The result is that you cannot remove the keys with anything (that I have discovered so far)! Registry Mechanic just whizzes right past them, Regedit won't touch them, etc. Ideas?? Short of format & reload?! XPAddict

I have to say that I am a little bit surprised that no one on this forum mentions the latest Solution Accelerator from Microsoft for Desktop Deployment. Download at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopde...ddoverview.mspx The Standard edition includes a well documented and easily customizable deployment method including specific instructions on the use of Ghost that may give you your most complete starting point. From the detailed & complete build environment, to the WinPE Cd creation tools, to the aforementioned deployment method using Ghost or any other third party imaging product, it really is a turn key solution. Check it out!

What command line are you using with scanstate.exe, and what inf files are you calling? Running it within or under WinPE isn't really its expected environment. USMT 2.6 is infinitely more usable over earlier versions, but it is still expected to be run over a "live" copy of the OS you are migrating data from/to.

I have been moderately surprised for some time that no one seems to notice when Microsoft does something so very right as the release of the latest BDD Solution Accelerator Standard & Enterprise Editions. These toolsets are the natural progression of the original release approximately a year prior to the release of the latest tools on November 15. The documentation, the scripts, and the complete unattend build environment is very well designed so that corporations can produce a master desktop image, and automate the entire desktop deployment process. I have a vested interest in the product having toured the world in the last 3 years training 1000's of Microsoft customers in the tools used in desktop deployment. This particular offering really does go a long way towards providing a complete deployment scenario as well as the tools to craft it. Technologies used and described in great detail (in no certain order) are: User State Migration Tool Windows PE 2004 RIS (to deliver Windows PE) Sysprep Unattended setup Imaging - Ghost, PQIdeploy, SMS OS Deployment Application Compatibility Application Packaging Security Lite-Touch Deployment (someone has to "kick off" deployment) Zero-Touch Deployment (uses SMS 2003 to deploy XP w/o direct user intervention) Zero-Touch Provisioning (large enterprises use these tools to provision users & computers - best implemented as moving otherwise admin tasks to the user for self-provisioning) I actually sent in an announcement of the toolset as a news article for the front page, but it wasn't deemed by the moderators as worthy of the front page, but... Give it a thorough look - one of its best features is that it does encapsulate best practices as well as a well tested solution that can be installed and used almost w/o customization. XPAdddict

The problem is the length of the OemPnPDriversPath line. This line can only be 4096 characters in length. Looks like you will need to look into shortening your line, consolidating the drivers, or using one of the mentioned alternate methods from an earlier post.

Haven't used it yet myself, but here is the link to the authors website: http://www.weird173.net/apps/pmmate.html (Found via Google after removing the space in the name!) Glenn Fincher