Br4tt3

Had the same issue with this driver when supporting a Dell PE 2800 for RIS boots on a machine running Win2003 SP1. If I removed the SP1 from the RIS machine, the .inf worked like a charm until I put SP1 on again. Turned out that the .inf file parser (tcpsvcs.exe) is changed during the SP1 installation and that it would not decode the .inf correctly until one change the [intel.5.xx.xx] section to (as mentioned) [intel]. I dont have a WinPE built from a Win2003SP1 source in front of me but my guess is that the tcpsvcs.exe is included with the build if one examine the files in place. Best Regards Tha Sasusage Eater...

Hmm... stupid question but.. OEMPreinstall = Yes ??? Best Regards Lars Wurm

So the most obvious would be to have it on a DVD instead but maby u aint got one. Next would be to ask which version of WinPE u r using? if u got the Win2003 SP1 based code of PE u can always load WinPE into RAM and @ a convient time, ask the installer to change the CD to the WinXP product CD instead, and of u go... if not that, I dont know. U can minimize WinPE footprint by using the MS devliered script that comes with ur WinPE (cant remeber what it is named though) I use a WMI code script to check for the correct CD letter in the comp. Once it got the CD letter, it asks u to change the WinPE boot media for the WinXP CD instead, copy the i386 to the local drive and then u r ready if u wanna.. Best of luck to ya.

R u sure that Dell didnt change the device driver ID for the SATA controller driver? Then u have to add the corresponding entries to the TXTSETUP.SIF. Like u I have GX620 as a standard comp model @ work, and I just needed to change / add the device driver ID to my TXTSETUP.SIF file... then again, the installation should not halt that late in the installation, rather really early, as soon as it wants to write to the disc. Hope u get lucky.

lo dude.. yes it is, very much so... check out: http://unattended.msfn.org/global/oemfolders.htm by using these $OEM$ folders, u can pretty much "place" rather than copy files down to the local drive. In case u wanna place the copied files to another drive, rather than the system drive, just use a script / xcopy or any solution that would work for u... Best Regards Tha Wurm

I dont have the code with me but it is pretty simple. What u have to decide/tell is in what environment your are creating the file in (DOS or WinPE -16/32)? If you are in Win32 mode, u can use the nice feature of vb scripting which would function under WinPE, but in dos u r limited to pipe the command to a certain file. I will get back to u once I get home, have the darn things back home on CD... I would recommend u running the creation in WinPe if u have to option to do that. Then u can have a much nicer GUI and so on to look @ while creating the answer file. Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater

Personally, I can provide u with links to site that discuss the same issue as u wanna do (as greenmachine did) but I am not gonna perform the actual work for ya.. maby some other dudes wanna, I dont know. Just google TXTSETUP.SIF and u will get loads of hits.... and the link urself added contains all the crucial info to perform the job..

Personally, I have never seen that being accomplished through the ordinary Win32 time function (systray). Sure, u got the format of the time but u r missing out on the seconds.. prolly a freeware around that will do the trick but i doubt that u can get in native Win32. Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater

I would suggest u make a .wsf which do the job...

Or u can just use the label.exe file to perform the naming of ur drives... might be easier! Cheers..

An unattended installation on CD or a RIS installation of Windows offers limited support to customize the HDD / partitions automatically unless one can just have the entire disc blown... For this functionality, you would need something like WinPE or a DOS floppy that would kick the partitioning and format procedures from outside the OS installation as a Win32 OS will lock the drives for access during installation. WinPE or the DOS floppy would then kick the installation... For WinPE which is the prefered way (according to moi..) u can use diskpart which is very powerful. Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater...

1. You can boot WinPE from RIS, no problem, and if u r buying named computers (IBM/HP/SIEMENS...) 2. You most likely (99%) end up with PXE boot support as almost everyone in the industry adopted this boot procedure. 3. In case u dont have it, RIS features a boot floppy for some of the most common brands (3Com) always works, which u can use to boot the machine into PXE even if the native NIC does not support PXE booting. At my company we support about 10 models of servers from DELL and 25 models of desktops / laptops of a grand total 30.000 units through deployment using RIS through one generic image for each of the OS (WinXP & Win2003). One weak spot, in my humble honest opinon, when using RIS: The disc support options are to few, you will need to have something like WinPE to adjust HDD size automatically (example, for servers) while the Repartition = Yes would work for almost any configuration on a desktop / laptop. P.S Lovely summary, thanks for the time u spent on it. It will defintly be in my favorites... Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater

Yup... I am running of a DVD! If I am not mistaken u must specify a -m switch for the iso utility (oscdimg.exe) so that u can create images larger then 700 MB. I am not sure about the last part... but it defintly works to have WinPE on DVD. Best Regards Tha Sausage Eater

Cant really say that there is more functionality to the WinPE2005 WMI part.. i am running the PE2005 and still have to hax stuff to get it to work... Think that PCI slots will be kind of tricky with the limited support from PE! but there are good .exe's for that I hope... there are .exe's for everything I guess. Keep truckin... P.S Mats! Hej på dig! Kul med en svensk...

I would say that i allows u to change the removable media if that is the source of installation, nice feature if u only have a CD and not a DVD unite.... and RAM is somewhat faster when performing file copy sequences then performed from a CD for example.. then again, takes longer to load the .iso into RAM also. Otherwise, it is just show off...

As I understand it there is just a specific part of the entire subset of properties of WMI included with the support for WinPE. In my case I was trying to investigate / ask dynamically through WMI which drive letter the CD unite had... from a WinXP box I choose a property that seemed to match the question. When performing it from WinPE it returned it as none existing.. So I choose another property to figure out which drive letter it was.. so I based it on that not all properties were to be found in WinPE WMI when comparing them to a full blown XP box. Then again, same .dll and .ocx files that u register so I am not sure... Good luck!

I have used your tool which is very powerful... nice 1. However, most of it can be done from within diskpart which is needed. Atleast as far as I am needing disk partioning tools... Regards Lars Wurm

U tried to enclose the OEMFilesPath entry with " " marks? and it still doesnt work? I almost use the same setup as you with my WinPE but I enclose my entry with " " because the install will need it as it will treat it as a long string... Regards

Havent read the file u supplied but I assume ur Z: drive is the mapped network drive that u r storing ur $OEM$ folder on? In that case, u can copy the $OEM$ folder structure down to the local HDD and then point out the path through the OEMFilesPath entry in ur answer file... and make sure that the path specified is in quotation marks " " if it is to be considered a "long" path... according to the MS deployment tools chm files. that should do it for u... Regards from the sausage eater...

There is a coupple of ways to do this... easiest and most felxible way of working with group and user administration (according to the sausage eater) is with visual basic scripting... just go to the MS webby and the script repository and u will find sample scripts for these kind of things. Regards

Well, SrvWiz entry is for the "Manage Your Server" .hta that comes with Win2003 (common to all Win2003 versions) which I personally fix in the hivedef.inf file. The PSSU (only found in slipstreamed installs of Win2003 SP1) can be configured not to be showed by: adding configuration for deactivating the Windows 2003 firewall settings. once this is done, the PSSU dialog box is not showed on newly installed systems...

u can wrap the .exe installation in a .vbs script which u have better control of the flow from the installation. The thing u r looking for is: Ex. Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Command = "%WINDIR%\system32\Calc.exe" WshShell.Run Command, 0, True where the 0 checks if it is to visible and the True for the script for the process to finish before continue with the next step in tha process... It is always a mess to kick of another process from the native process driven vbs or batch... as some setup engines seems to "fire and forget".. Hope this solves it for ya..

I would strongly recommend u to get a copy from VM ware or MS Virtual PC to try the installation out with instead of burning CD's and stuff... download an eval of them... Regards

me bad.... soz. check ur txtsetup.sif if that is the way u added the raid drivers into the installation..

think we r goíng to need more info on that one... r u just copying the i386 or running the installation from a "original" MS CD? if just the i386 folder gets copied down to the drive before running ur setup, then i guess it might be that ur txtsetup.sif is strange (if u used that way of adding raid drivers).. if it is a case of the using the whole XP cd for the installation, then i guess it would be a question of first verifying if the odd <winnt51> (version files?) are present on the CD... Supply some more info...