djinnZ

Hi, thanks for the answer and the help. I have tryed something with no results but with your links I have began to understand something. PLOP not work with my laptop (mitac 8317) or I do something wrong (later I will better verify now can not try on another pc), but I am looking also at another solution based on grub4dos, kboot or similar (posix environments are more familiar than MS-windows for me, I have never think to serious work on it before, apply some registry hacks and so). thanks, the links have explained to me how to do.Just explain to me: To start the installer I only need a NT4 environment with USB support? I have seen something about the creation of a "ramdisk image" but nothing clear, what can be the sequence of commands to create it? Must use bartPE or not, by example? I find the documentation confused... In fact I will choiche between create a complete new installation and reuse directly the previous users, "Documents and settings" and its registers if they exists and only erase and re-install the system and application. But I have seen than is not so easy. No I will only update the installers on the disk every week but I hope to never use it, must be the last resort, if the backup will not work, or if the system disk will be substituted. The complete collectionn of the installers will take more than 4 GB. Just to explain, I am a tax consultant (something similar) and must use some differenet crappy programs for accounting and to send some e-documents (obbligated by law) to the governement, all the softeare need to be installed with strange online registration procedures and are using unusual copy protection systems. Every computer has different software installed because some programws will never work if one of another producer are installed. They are made by not very competent programmers, I know, but there are no alternative, one of the "best" is a program to calculate differences and interests in salaries, there are only two producers (the other has no good salaries database and has more problems), as I have reported (before the release of the virtualization solutions) to the assistance than I cant work the answer was "buy another pc to install only our program, it will not cost too much" (yes and so I need the space to put a big rack storage of computer on my desktop... I have answer). Sometimes the simplest way is to reinstall a fresh copy if an update will lock the software and is painful to restore all the customizations (the lock of the usb device, remove the remote desktop, the messenger or my secretary will only chat and not work etc.). In my experience all the local vendors and maintenance near me support totally inaffidable, incompetent or they will only try to stole money and put illegal software on the computers (this was veriefied and reported the last year in an official comunicate by Microsoft, is not only IMHO). Some tipical examples: you send a pc with a regular licence of XP pro and office small business and they will restitute to you with a cracked xp home and a cracked office pro; or if you acclude the original installer it will be "lost", in fact reselled to another person, without licence; everytime is installed malware or virus on the repaired pc in order to have it back for another expensive manutention; substituted HDs are reselled, no problem if damaged, without erase; if you have any another OS it will be erased and signed as possible cause of damage; ifr you leave a computer without of the HD will be not repaired etc.). My work is similar to the lawer, I must retain as secret any information from my customers, must be sure to not have any possible intrusion risk and obliviously will not be cheated by those idiots. You can think I am a paranoid but I have experimented too much problems in past years (at the time of my second PC the only way to have back the installers of the MS-DOS 6 at end was to call the police). So I buy the components in another city (the only trusted seller I know only substitute and verify the hardware but never install any software or system, is its commercial choiche) or by internet and can mantain and repair alla by myself; but if something goes wrong in my absence?! I will leave in the office a little cdrom and the key (or a little USB-HD) to have a starup menu with the choiches: fix boot manager, start disk repair, erase disk, restore backup and install systems. So I can go on vacation (far from my country, without abylity to be contacted and more than one week long ) without fears. Sorry for the outburst, but I hope you understand.

Hi, there are a solution to make a boot cdrom only to start the installer created from nlite from an usb keydrive? The bios of my pc can not boot usb drives and I must update often the image (my accounting software will be updated every week) and I am try to build a custom installer to reuse the "document and settings" stored in another partition without reconfigure the user shares and so other. Last question is how to remap drives (by example the D: will be Z:) before setup or if it is necessary in order to install documents and settings in another partition. Excuse me in advice for the bad english if you find it poor and thanks for any suggestion.