meh11

It's very simple. After a fresh install, hit Start=> RUN and type regedit then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\MountedDevices. There are a bunch of entries that correspond to random drive letters such as \DosDevices\C:, rename the one for the hard drive to Z for the time being. Then shift the other letters forwards as you need and rename drive Z to C and reboot. It usually works although I have had it fail once or twice when it wasn't on a fresh install. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

You don't need MMCS either.

Silly geese. It's the 1994 equivalent of saying "Go to www.youtube.com to watch movies!!!1".

Why not just set it to not shut the HDDs off for say, 400 minutes? I do that, used to have this silly spinning up and down as well.

Are you talking about the File, Edit, View, etc menus? Folder Options ==> View Tab ==> Always show menus (tick this). Nothing much else....

Pop a Vista cd in, boot from it, in repair mode. Run the following commands in the commandline: bootrec /fixmbr bootrec /fixboot bootrec /rebuildbcd This rebuilds the BCD, fixes the MBR, the partition boot sector, hence making the OS show. Then, in the repair options hit "Startup Repair" and it will copy BOOTMGR to your system partition.

How did you get past the insane file sizes of the standard integretation method? I believe it would be better to simply use a baseline ready made ISO from MS instead of integrating. Are those free to distribute if at all, final SP1 or beta edition? I mean, the product key is what matters.

Battlefield 2 works perfectly on a super-barebones service configuration (By that, I mean the original Vista DVD but tweaked to the core after installation, not a vLite image), and I have about 5-8 running services and 24-32 running processes on that config. vLiting a service out for a standard "home" configuration is just asking for trouble. If you really don't want the service, just disable it via the registry or services.msc, don't remove it.

It's not like that. I guess I should have started from the start. So - Aim: To build a fully customized and shrink-wrapped Vista install DVD Current Method: 1.) Run VMWare - set everything up accordingly, install such that I have a clean VMDK containing one volume with the master installation image - everything is configured after 6 bloody hours 2.) Run VMWare but boot from WinPE and use imagex to dump all 12GB into a WIM file across a virtual network share 3.) Fail at 87% when the compressed WIM file is roughly 4GB large Ideally, what I would want is a Vista DVD, such that from boot: 1.) It boots. It autoselects all WinPE localisation settings to en-GB. 2.) It presents the "Repair or Install" menu. 3.) If "Install" is selected, it presents a choice of Vista Ultimate Barebones or Vista Ultimate Standard (the names used here are arbitrary - the first is a completely slimmed edition of Vista for perf testing, Standard would be my usable image for system reinstallation) 4.) Auto install the rest of the way, prompting only for the partition setup, and after the 3000 reboots, loading straight into a pre-configured OS with autologin (i.e. I select all the relevant WinPE setup options, then let it do its thing and come back to a logged in Vista OS) The problem, of course is that the virtual hard disk used is 12GB large, compressing to roughly 5GB - in VMWare, I install SP1 straight off, then MS Office and a few other things like Powerstrip & FRAPS, and preconfigure the users/login settings, such that one (not the local) administrator account logs in automatically, and instantly locks the workstation (switch-user screen). WinSxS bloats to around 5-7GB after that. This is pre-vLite, for obvious reasons. I intend to remove a lot of rubbish from the final prepped WIM with vLite. I do have an autounattend.xml that does quite a lot of the things needed, but it just forces the WinPE & Repair screens to be skipped - I want to choose, in the way that more or less every Linux ISO I've used since 1995 has handled - to be able to install or boot to "WinPE". I'm giving it a go now with FB1CRE_EN_DVD or whatever, the readymade SP1 ISO, and VMWare to an unmounted physical disk partition. It seems, that to be lazy, one has to put double the original effort in. Conservation of energy, or Sod's law?

As the title says, I'm in imagex/vmware hell. I've made my custom Vista Ultimate x86 image on a virtual machine (call this the "master computer" if we follow the MS guide), with a few apps + Office installed, and it comes up to 12GB. At least 5GB is taken by that silly bodge job - the WinSxS folder - and it compresses presumeably to 5GB. A few questions: A.) How the hell did MS get their full OS image down to 1.1GB (Ultimate Edition WIM on its own)? B.) Imagex craps out at 87%/4GB, any idea on fixing that? That's IMAGEX, not OSCDIMG (no patronizing intended ) C.) Any way to mount this VMDK without either the VDK driver or from within VMWare itself (all VMWare mount tools say there are "no volumes in this drive")? If I installed to a physical partition (*cringe*), would it be easier? By that, I mean literally copy over all the files in the VMDK to an unmounted physical partition, exit VMWare, mount the partition, run CHKDSK, etc, etc... D.) How exactly does the WIM format work in terms of NTFS security permissions? Is there any specific file system like FAT or NTFS or does it simply store the files & their access control lists and whatever other rubbish? Does it even need the security descriptors for a clean install (I wish to copy this WIM to a prebuilt setup DVD and reconfigure/reimage that DVD to work)? Thanks in advance. Oh, by the way, I did just snag a copy of the SP1 pre-beta, would it be easier to start from there instead of using my RTM image, integrating SP1 standalone and repacking, then installing apps?

If you are on an OEM PC with the manufacturer's ACPI - SLIC table built in, then it'll auto activate. It won't work in a virtual machine because the VM won't have the SLIC table in the virtual BIOS (unless you get clever ).