Phoneywar

The simplest solution is to add it to 'cmdlines.txt' and append 'add /q' to the command line. This will perform a totally silent install without automatically rebooting which will happen anyway at the end of the O/S install. EDIT: I forgot to mention it cannot be integrated in any way. Security issues.

If you mean 'Can you set a custom desktop background automatically during an unattended install' then I would have to say Yes, but there are problems with it. If you set the relevent registry key from cmdlines.txt it doesn't 'stick'. Both the Default User and any user accounts you have created will have the original default setting. If you set the reg-key at first logon then it will 'stick'. Basically you need an $OEM$\$$ folder on your CD containing your custom background image and an .INF file to set the appropriate registry key. I seem to remember Silvereyes posting some info on this a while back. Try searching his posts.

Ah... I rather suspected this was a windows issue. The names are being entered during the unattended install configuration phase of nLite which is probably how it's getting past XP's own checking mechanism. I don't normally use the same name for both, which of course is why I've never encountered this before, but this was a special build for someone else.

For most 'everyday' stuff like email, web browsing etc. there is no effective difference between AMD and Intel processors of comparable spec. It's only when you get into high-end number crunching tasks like video processing/encoding, gaming etc. that you might notice a difference. Of course, having said that I've not noticed any difference between the Turion X2 and the Core 2 Duo even when running multiple VMs.

I encountered a rather weird issue yesterday. Using nLite to create an unattended install CD for XP Home SP1a slipstreamed with SP3. If I assign the same name to both the machine and the new user being created by the unattended install process, the user is not created as a member of the Administrators group, only as a member of Users. Changing either the machine name or the user name resolves this issue. Anyone else encountered this?

Sounds like the same issue as the Dell machines had. Some id*** in their engineering dept thought it would be an absolutely marvelous idea to built an OS image using a machine with an AMD processor for deployment on machines with an Intel processor. I seem to recall that there is a fix for this but I cannot remember what it is offhand. Perhaps one of the others can.

My package is just a little old

The clock issue is a red herring. If you've ever hung out in or searched the VMware forums you would see there is usually a fairly steady trickle of questions about guest, and sometimes host, clocks losing and/or gaining time. The number of VMs you were running is also a bit of a red herring. If you had 'overloaded' the machine you would have see two effects, an apparent slowdown, ie. host and VMs would have appeared less responsive, and the hardware would have run a bit hotter. I honestly don't know of anything which can damage a CPU other than the Terrible Twins - Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) and Heat.

This would be of considerable interest to me as well. Providing it could be converted from batch files to a make style build system, but I have a sneaky suspicious that's something I would have to do myself

No, that not true at all. The NTFS filesystem needs regular defragging just like any other.

As far as I am aware you can just run the installer and it will update the existing drivers.

Oh, right. Not as bad as it sound then I would have to agree with you about Teac and Lite-On drives. I've never had one of those fail on me yet. In fact, I have an antique Teac CD/RW drive which saw a lot of heavy use, was put into storage for several years then resurrected as an external drive using a USB housing. Still works perfectly despite being the best part of ten years old.

As I understood his question he wants to setup one machine then copy that setup to all his other machines.

It was still using the .gho extension up to and including v8.0, the last one I evaluated. The Ghostexp from that version may be able to open images created with earlier versions.

I must admit I've never even heard of such a thing, never mind actually encountered it. Running a VM does put an additional load on the host machine but providing it's properly cooled that shouldn't cause any problems.