johnhc

romulopinho, if you are considering spending money (as has been suggested), I would suggest you consider buying an OEM copy of XP. Then you have complete freedom for installation. The last time I looked on Newegg.com, XP Home was about 90 USD and Pro was about 130 USD. If you are willing to do some heavy looking and possibly heavy work, start by opening the Support folder (I see none on your DVD), extract the DEPLOY.CAB file and look at the deploy.chm and ref.chm files. They contain instructions on using the install files. You can begin by looking in the winnt.sif and the txtsetup.sif files. You will be looking for the hooks Fujitsu put in to gain control. There are more files and possibly others will be able to supply some names. The Unattended Guide at the top of the forum page is a good place to start. It looks like you have a trade off of money vs work to consider. Also, please do the searching I suggested before. Enjoy, John.

romulopinho, I don't think nLite will do this for you directly. I have seen threads of posters using recovery CDs, some with success and some not. Yours is the first time I have heard of the format entire HDD problem. Please do some searching here and on the Internet against "recovery CD" and such. Good luck, John.

As I have stated before, there are some processes that can be rerun and some that can't. Perhaps if nuhi were here, we could understand the right and wrong ones. On the nLite web site, it states that you can remove components in one run and come back and remove more later. I have not tried this and don't think I will take the time to do so. I will continue to advise posters to run nLite only once. I have seen too many problems corrected by this simple change. I continue to learn - mainly why I am here. Enjoy, John.

elance, I understand and it may well continue, but it may well come around and bite you in the ....back. The bottom line is, of course, your are in total control and can do whatever works for you, even if we give you a hard time. Enjoy, John.

nickie827, if you will place your mouse cursor over each Tweak or Component, most will show you some explanation. This will show on the right or bottom. In some cases you may need to actually select (click on it) the item to see the explanation. Some have none. Also on some pages there is help text. This is shown with a ? in a circle. Click on the ? mark and you see some more information. Here is a great site (Black Viper) describing Services. When you come up with a particular question, please return with a question. And -X- is absolutely correct saying to leave it alone if you do not understand it. Once removed, consider it gone, because it may be very difficult if not impossible to restore in a running system. Also, please consider a virtual system (VMware Server, VirtualPC , VirtualBox - all free) for testing. Then you can try anything and see what happens. Have fun, John.

elance, -X- is talking about how the sections (eg, [TO]) are executed in an .inf file. I did some experimenting with this one time and it is a function of how the .inf is called. The section to be run is specified in the calling process. RunOnce is just a batch file and will run in order. A comment on your posting nLite.inf. I took both your files, combined them, then compressed them with 7-Zip. The result was a 15 kB file. You can post a .7z file. The last line in the nLite.inf file should be a delete of nhelper by nhelper (suicide). The fact that your nhelper is deleted earlier is a symptom of running more than once. I would expect you to get errors during install concerning missing nhelper.exe. If you are not getting these messages, then the section(s) that should be run (after nhelper was prematurely deleted) are not getting called. Basically you have a mess and it is not possible to determine what is occurring. There are some thing things that can be done running nLite more than once and some that do not work. I suspect no one with the possible exception of nuhi (author/owner) can tell us which is which. We have not seen nuhi here for some time and may not for a while. A minor comment on your Last Session files. You need to remove the Tweak "Explorer-Launch folder windows in a separate process". It exposes a Windows bug. Enjoy, John.

elance, I do everything in one nLite run. You are asking for grief in the form of myriad strange symptoms running it more than once against the same source. And, it is just not necessary. Many a poster here have corrected their problems by simply stopping this process. I tried several things with multiple runs (using VM) and ended up with strange things like missing Quick Launch folder and several more. Enjoy, John. EDIT: Another advantage is that you only have one Last Session. Also, you do not need to run booogy's WMP11 Slipstreamer separately. For several versions of nLite now it is integrated into nLite. It needs to be installed on your system, but nLite will call it automatically. Just place the WMP11 installer and all its updates into the Hot Fix section (in that order).

elance, I strongly recommend 7-Zip. It will extract/expand almost any compressed file and probably does a superior job of compressing files (but not XX_ and .cab files) than almost all others. I stay away from all the free DLs until I understand them and 7-Zip and RAR are well known and trusted. I know nothing about the others. Makecab (Microsoft) does just fine making XX_ compressed files, possibly not as well compressed as some. jcarle's stuff is probably fine. He can be found here. There is an SVCPACK.DL_, so I suspect you expanded the wrong file. Enjoy, John.

elance, please do us all a favor and attach (not paste) your Last Session. If you would be so kind, as to do so and delete the pasted one. Thanks, John. EDIT: I suggest you look into a virtual system (no more coasters), or use rewritable DVDs. VMware Server, VirtualPC and VirtualBox are all free. I use VMware Server, but it is huge compared to the others. I and install XP x64 on my VM is less than 20 minutes. You want a blank desktop wallpaper? You can place any wallpaper files into your ISO via the $OEM$ folder with a structure like this: C:\XP_Source\$OEM$\$$\Web\Wallpaper. Just place them into the Wallpaper folder. Use your specified theme to select the wallpaper file. Or construct your theme to include you desired theme. Enjoy, John.

Kelsenellenelvian and mritter, I think I understand how I did this. I selected MakeDir, then selected another command to copy the path. When I went back to the {MAKEDIR} command line, the blank after {MAKEDIR} was gone. I will pay more attention. Sorry about that ghost. Enjoy, and thanks, John.

elance, are you saying that you expanded the SVCPACK.IN_ and got a .dll out of it? Where did you get the SVCPACK.IN_? You should get a SVCPACK.INF file. the name with the underscore is just the compressed version of the file with the last character changed to an _. If you were to compress a .dll file, then rename the result file to SVCPACK.IN_, when it was expanded, the .dll will come back. I use 7-Zip to expand a file like this and the makecab command (at the command prompt) to make the compressed file. There are many compressor/decompresser programs that will expand the file including the expand command, again at the command prompt. The expand and makecab commands are explained via Help and Support. You should understand that placing an installer or hot fix in the SVCPACK does not integrate it. It simply causes Setup (Windows Install) to execute the file during installation at T-13. I do not use .NET AddOns, but I suspect that RyanVM has good ones. I should also point out that there are two different kinds of AddOns. One, called Real or True or Slipstream will integrate at nLite time, the other called .inf will do it via SVCPACK at T-13. Enjoy, John.

elance, you never attached your Last Session, so we really do not know what you are doing. I also don't understand what you mean by adding all the updates that won't integrate and the dotnet packages as runonce before burning the ISO If you looked at Kurt_Aust's guide, you would have no pause at burning an ISO. In the Unattended Task - Desktop themes tab is where you change the theme and wallpaper. Please read the help text, ? in circle in the lower right corner. Enjoy, John.

mritter, that is the exact text and I don't remember deleting the space, but I just tried it again and it works fine. The space was there, I just added my path and all is OK. Thanks, John.

F1refly, there are a number of threads about this very subject. One was very recent. The bottom line is there is no known solution. Please do a search and find the relevant threads. The obvious solution is not to slip SP3. Add it after you install XP. Are you going to install it on the machine now running W7 or a new machine? Either way, another solution is to install XP on the machine and use it to run nLite and build an ISO to install. Also you can use a virtual system (VMware Server, VirtualPC, VirtualBox - all free), install XP on it and run nLite there. Compatibility mode does not help. Good luck, John. EDIT: Here's the recent thread.

Thanks, Kels. I changed it to Cmd /C MD "%AppData%\Thunderbird" and it worked. Enjoy, John.

Using WPI 7.6.0 and a {MAKEDIR} failed. The error I got was: I copied the command from the log file, pasted it into a command prompt, changed the {MAKEDIR} to md and it worked. I am running XP x64. Thanks for your help. Enjoy, John.

systemous, you certainly can change the theme in the Unattended Task of nLite. I have no idea what you mean by "add your own texts". If you are asking if you can alter the theme with your own text, then the answer is, not with nLite. However, you can use any Windows valid theme. I am using one I found via Google and it is far from any MS type. Enjoy, John.

elance, I would suggest you ask questions about the RyanVM AddOn pack on the RyanVM forum. I run XP x64 and install .NET using the RunOnce exit in Unattended section because the .NET installer and updates do not slipstream. I am not a fan of Update Packs and AddOns so I use them sparingly. Since I use x64, I cannot answer questions about your specific updates, but several x64 updates do not slipstream and I run them, again, out of the RunOnce exit. I use Kurt_Aust's excellent guide. So, please attach (not paste) your Last Session.ini. Make sure to always start with a fresh copy of your CD files/folders, do all your work in one nLite session and integrate only one SP. Please report when you have a solution, so others can benefit. Enjoy, John.

colore, not that I know of, but perhaps someone else has knowledge of your problem. Good luck, John.

colore, your Last Session can usually be found in two places, on the CD (unless you checked the Option to not save it) and in the Presets folder of the nLite folder of your Program Files folder, by date/time code (unless you have deleted it). So, please attach (not paste) your Last Session.ini. Make sure to always start with a fresh copy of your CD files/folders, do all your work in one nLite session and integrate only one SP. Please report when you have a solution, so others can benefit. Enjoy, John.

-X-, JayDogg has Unattended Mode set to Automatic and should not need to edit the winnt.sif file. Enjoy, John.

JayDogg, as I have said before you have a mess from running nLite more than once against the same source. I think that thing is called Windows Install, i.e. Attended Install. Your posted Last Session should have prevented this. When you have started from a fresh source and still have any kind of problem, please repost and attach your Last Session and we will start afresh. Good luck, John.

-X-, Report button is for: I am curious who warned you and how? My approach here is to cause a change or abandoned the thread. My spell checker went off on the quote, but I left it as is. Enjoy, John.

JayDogg, I think that is just a normal Attended install. What you need to do to get rid of it is start over from scratch, make sure to always start with a fresh copy of your CD files/folders, do all your work in one nLite session and integrate only one SP. Please report when you have a solution, so others can benefit. Enjoy, John.

komplex, plenty of people have had good success with nLite and SATA drivers (main reason I came here in the first pace, no floppy in my next build). To get at your error we need some detail. Please post screen shot(s) of any and all errors you are getting. Do you have .NET Framework installed (at least 2.0)? What kind of OS are you running under? What is the source of your copy of Windows. Please note the forum rules which prohibit the discussion of copies of SW that is not legal with a legal key. When you say you can't boot from your Windows CD, what error if any do you get? How was the CD made/obtained? I have no experience with Linux, so can't rally answer your questions there, but I would assume you should be able to boot and install Windows. Have you got the BIOS set properly for booting from your optical drive? An alternative to nLite is an Unattended installation. The Guide link is at the top of the forum pages. Enjoy, John. EDIT: I failed to ask the obvious questions: What nLite version are you using and where did you get it? Answers: 1.4.9.1 and here.