Crankyhobo

[i cant find the delete button]

Using Vlite to merge SWM I emailed the VLite guy about being able to load SWM straight into VLite and he responded quickly and was helpful. It will try and merge SWM into WIM for you but you have to copy the two ASUS SWM into the sources folder and rename them to INSTALL.SWM and INSTALL2.SWM. For me it comes up with an error message code 138 while its trying to merge saying 'error while aquiring other images' but it appears to keep going and complete the full byte size to be merged. He said hes going to look at making the image loading more flexible so you don't have to move the files around and rename them. The problem seems to be ... That asus isn't using a normal windows installer, if you look in the boot.wim file you can see all the ASUS setup files which as precursor said, have a few ASUS made exe files, norton ghost and some scripts. I tried a few times expanding and joining SWM and changing the image to be installed but realised all that was a waste of time because im not even able to burn a version with original files. I tried to copy the original files from the ASUS Recovery DVD and then rebuild the ISO without making any changes and it gives me the sustained system beep when i try and boot from it. I tried doing it with CDImage and OSCDIMG with lots of different parameter configurations from the web and official docs and nothing seems to work which makes me wonder if those proprietary ASUS install files are doing some checks to see if its an original disk/modified. Seems like the solution is ... To create a new ASUS OEM disk based off an original Retail Vista DVD. I haven't figured out all the details but in order to accomplish that you would need to extract the "xmr-ms" license files that are embedded into your Asus Recovery Disk and these should match up to your BIOS and OEM Product Key. With that information plugged into the right places on in the vista install you should be able to make a new oem disk that activates. Theres a thread talking about how to do it here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...p;p=633551& Some Links that might be of some use Another thread talking about making OEM DVDs http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showthread.php?t=108 MS Guide on Capturing and Deploying Custom Images http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista...3.mspx?mfr=true GIMAGEX - GUI Version of ImageX http://www.autoitscript.com/gimagex/ ISO Building Command Lines oscdimg -bC:\Vista\boot\etfsboot.com -h -u2 -m -lVISTA_EN_DVD C:\Vista\ C:\VistaDVD.iso cdimage.exe -lVISTA_EN_DVD -m -u2 -bC:\Vista\boot\etfsboot.com C:\Vista\ C:\Vistax86.iso

If you need a copy of 'Imagex' You can get it as part of the WAIK (windows automated installation kit) which can be downloaded from Microsoft (900mb iso download): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en imagex.exe also comes on some Vista DVDs (Dell oem, probably retail aswell, under the sources folder) Merging SWM into WIM 1) Paste Imagex.exe into your windows\system32 directory so that it can be accessed in CMD window from any directory. 2) open a command prompt, change dir (cd) to path with the SWM files paste the following (right click + select paste / CTRL+Z shortcut doesn't work) imagex /ref install*.swm /check /export install.swm 2 install.wim "Windows Vista Home Premium" obviously replace "install*.swm" and "install.swm" with the name of your files if its different and edit the "Windows Vista Home Premium" part to suit your version 3) Hit ENTER and it should start converting and place the new file in the same directory as INSTALL.WIM Splitting WIM into SWM Simlar idea to merging, cmd line is imagex /split [.SWM file to be split] [.WIM file/path to be saved as] [filesize] eg. imagex /split asus.swm install.wim 700