pup

The Navigation works less well using Firefox 0.8. The text is almost the same colour as the background - you can't read it.

@Diamond I'm glad I could help. I'd strongly recommend using the XPCreate method for creating your disk. If you follow this, with the recommended downloads (which you can download with a single click using Jono's Autodownloader), then you'll have an XP build disk that will seamlessly have all the service packs to date, Media Player 9, DirectX 9.0b, .Net framework 1.1, etc. already installed. I think that covers everything except the auto-logon. I remember seeing a post saying that if you encrypt the admin password then you can't use auto-logon - don't know if this affects you, but it might. (links to XPCreate and Autodownloder in previous post) - Pup

The only prompt I received was the Computername/Admin Password screen (as per screen shot). (Actually, it also asked me which partition to install it on, but that's just because that's the way I want it to work) My winnt.sif: ;SetupMgrTag[Data] AutoPartition=0 MsDosInitiated="0" UnattendedInstall="Yes" [unattended] UnattendMode=DefaultHide OemSkipEula=Yes OemPreinstall=Yes TargetPath=\WINDOWS UnattendSwitch=yes DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore DisableDynamicUpdates=Yes Hibernation=0 [Display] BitsPerPel=32 Xresolution=1024 Yresolution=768 Vrefresh=60 [GuiUnattended] AdminPassword=qwerty EncryptedAdminPassword=NO OEMSkipRegional=1 TimeZone=85 OemSkipWelcome=1 AutoLogon=yes AutoLogonCount=1 [userData] ProductID=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX FullName="My Name" OrgName="My Org" [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1 SystemLocale=00000809 UserLocale=00000809 InputLocale=0809:00000809 [identification] JoinWorkgroup=WORKGROUP [Networking] InstallDefaultComponents=Yes [Components] msmsgs=off msnexplr=off [shell] DefaultStartPanelOff=Yes DefaultThemesOff=Yes [GuiRunOnce] %systemdrive%\install\main_batch.cmd %systemdrive%\install\tidy.cmdHope this is what you wanted! Make sure you check out the following resources: Official Unattended XP CD Guide XPCreate XP Hotfix downloader (in XPCreate folder structure) Let me know if you have any problems, - Pup

Testing it on VMWare as we speak...

And you'll have to set the Unattend property to 'DefaultHide' property: [unattended] UnattendMode=DefaultHideFrom ref.chm (Support\Tools\Deploy.cab) (I might be talking crap though - I have had a couple of beers )

Can't you just write a normal unattended winnt.sif, but leave the computername out? I'll try it (give me 20 minutes), if it works then I'll elaborate...

AC3 Filter 0.70b %systemdrive%\Install\Apps\AC3\ac3filter_0_70b.exe /S

I'm a big fan. Recently played it at a LAN party, and everyone enjoyed it. It helped that it ran smoothly on everyone's PCs, whether you had a 3 GHz P4 with a GeForce 5900 XT , or just a GeForce 2 MX, you could still make it smooth and have fun. The variety of game types meant no-one had chance to get bored. And they didn't overly push any of the new stuff (i.e. there are only vehicles in a handful of maps). My only critisim would be, that I don't think I'll play it much now. I played it a bit, really enjoyed it, but there's not really enough to make me want to play it single player. We'll be playing it next time there's a LAN Party though.

Thanks for your replies, I'll have a go this weekend and tell you all how I get on

So... I've used XPCreate, plus all the excellent info from the various sites around (big thumbs up to AaronXp, GreenMachine, and Jono ) to build myself an unattended XP build CD. I'm happy with that. Service packs, hotfixes, etc... all sorted. But I'd like to be able to prompt for the Username and Computer Name up-front. I'm looking for suggestions on how to do this. I don't like floppy disks, so I'd like to leave all my install files on CD. I also like to leave the partition settings out of the winnt.sif file, so that XP prompts for where you'd like it installing (the only part that is not unattended). Looking round, I've seen a number of methods mentioned, but want to know what people think (or if there are any good guides, etc... for any of them), including: * Using WinPE to front the install (if doing this, then I assume I could do the partioning at this stage?!?) * Setting up a batch file to prompt for information, then saving the winnt.sif to floppy (not really what I want) Any suggestions/links etc. would be greatly appreciated,

Don't know if it works, but the line from one of the other posts is: REG ADD %KEY%\105 /V 1 /D "%systemdrive%\install\hotfixes\Q832483.EXE /T:%systemdrive%\install\tmp2 /C:\"%systemdrive%\install\tmp2\dahotfix.exe /q Looks like you have the following extra stuff - is it needed? /n\" /q" /f For more info. see: The Forum Post Let me know if it helps

No problems, Glad it works.

I hope it's this simple - but don't you have to use '/quiet' not '/silent' (on the first secedit call) ?

@AaronXP Name me 1 good reason why you need a floppy drive? They're slow. They can't store anything bigger than a small Word document, they lose data whenever you walk past an Industrial Strength Magnet (happens more often than you would think), and CDs only cost 10p a pop. Heck, DVDs are now under £1.

jess alba has funny lips No - Jennifer Garner from Alias - much better

@Jazz - I think it's down to the Q832894 hotfix - which would make sense as it is one of the files that it updates that it is complaining about 'SHLWAPI.DLL'. I re-downloaded my copy, using the XP Hotfix Auto Downloader by Jono (http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=15555), and there is a difference in filesize: Yours (and my old version): 01/16/2004 03:37 PM 3,083,512 Q832894.exe My new version (that works): 13/04/2004 05:51 2,907,904 Q832894e.exe Don't know where I got mine, but I don't care. All is now happy... @GM - Top marks on a cracking set of scripts. Talk about easy to use! Keep it up.

I had the same error. Got round it by removing some of the extra packages from the SVC-PRE, SVC-WMP & SVC-X2M folders I think. I'll try and narrow it down, by adding them back it. (And before you say anything... If I can't work it out then I'll post my log file )

A checksum for a file (or whatever - it could just be a piece of text, a network packet, a word document, ...) is a number that is calculated by performing some calculation using every bit of data in a file. If any single bit of data changes, i.e. the file changes, then the result of the checksum calculation will be different. Depending on the type of processing used, this can make it [almost] impossible for a virus/trojan writer to change a file without the checksum also changing. An example: A simple checksum for a series of numbers would just be to add each individual number together, divide by 10 and keep the remainder, 14433234 would be: (1+4+4+3+3+2+3+4) = 24, 24 / 10 = 2 remainder 4, so the checksum would be 4 If any of the numbers change then the checksum would also change. The checksums used by real world applications are much more complicated than this, and the size of the resulting checksum will be much larger, more like 243FA290F43C8E48, but the overall effect is the same. (I really should get out more)