gosherm

Hmm... the best that I'm coming up with off the top of my head is to use RunOnceEx/GuiRunOnce and call the shutdown command. However, that happens after the reboot and first part of login is initiated. Perhaps if you could share with us the purpose for doing this we might be able to come up with another solution as well.

You can even customize it if you want. See the Office 2003 non-administrative install.

Sure this can be done using a MST. The only difference between doing this and installing off of the CD is that your automation script needs to somehow determine what drive things are on. Personally, I'm moving my Unattended DVD back to a CD format and installing just about everything from my media drive after I set the drive letters using MapDrive. So far, works great for me

In a word... no. At least not that I am aware of. What I ended up doing was an xcopy of the appropriate file structure once the profile folders had been created. The end result is the same, there's just one more step along the way.

Either download them from the VMware site (I believe they are available in individual packages) or extract them from the VMware tools ISO (located at c:\program files\vmware\vmware workstation\windows.iso on my machine).

Dunno... haven't tested it. I'm just using standard stuff though, so I imagine that it'll work. Give it a try I QA by day, but I script/program by night... never the twain shall meet. Well, ok, maybe someday, but not for this beta

Well, I've finally finished the 1.0 InstallScript and am releasing it in a beta format. It can be downloaded from the Unattended Setup Companion website or directly from here. This is just the beta of the install script. The config utility should be following shortly, but you can still build your own data files by hand in the simple XML format. The zip file contains a sample and a brief explination as to how to write your own data file. Currently, the beta is only known to work at first login, whether launched through runonceex, or by the [GuiRunOnce] section of winnt.sif. If you find any bugs, please report them either on this forum, or to the USC email at "usc [ at ] gosherm [ dot ] org".

Yeah, that's just the one line version of the code... however, it won't work if you need to protect two files (boot.bmp & boot1.bmp)

What burning program are you using? Are you using the "burn an image" feature of it? What steps in the program are you taking? How big is your file? What burning program are you using? Are you using the "burn an image" feature of it? What steps in the program are you taking? How big is your file?

I use Nero to burn the nLite image onto DVD and it works just fine for me. What errors are you getting?

Doh! I think you're right... I can't believe I missed that.

Hmm... it shouldn't be... though I did find one problem. Try this as a test: for /F "usebackq tokens=*" %%i in (`dir /b %WinDir%\*.bmp`) do ( if %%i neq boot.bmp ( if %%i neq boot2.bmp ( echo deleting "%%i" ) else ( echo saving "%%i" ) ) else ( echo saving "%%i" ) ) and this as the final: for /F "usebackq tokens=*" %%i in (`dir /b %WinDir%\*.bmp`) do ( if %%i neq boot.bmp ( if %%i neq boot2.bmp ( del /f /q "%%i" ) ) )

%windir% is going to be your windows folder (i.e. c:\windows), not the drive root (%systemdrive%). It shouldn't have removed any files from C:\. As far as multiple files, this is where the second solution gets messy because the IF statement can't handle complex statements (i.e. if (a=b OR a=c) then). So, you're left with: for /F "usebackq" %%i in (`dir /b %WinDir%\*.bmp`) do ( if %%i neq boot.bmp ( if %%i neq boot2.bmp ( del /f /q %%i ) ) ) Whereas the first solution gives you: REN %WinDir%\boot.bmp boot.pmb REN %WinDir%\boot2.bmp boot2.pmb del %WinDir%\*.bmp /F /Q REN %WinDir%\boot.pmb boot.bmp REN %WinDir%\boot2.pmb boot2.bmp

Glad I could be of service

Ok, how about this? for /F "usebackq" %%i in (`dir /b %WinDir%\*.bmp`) do ( if %%i equ boot.bmp ( REM Found boot.bmp ) else ( del /f /q %%i ) ) My suggestion is to still use the first solution as 1) it is cleaner and 2) it has less overhead Edit: Hmm... I suppose this could actually be simplified a little bit to: for /F "usebackq" %%i in (`dir /b %WinDir%\*.bmp`) do ( if %%i neq boot.bmp ( del /f /q %%i ) )

REN %WinDir%\boot.bmp boot.pmb del %WinDir%\*.bmp /F /Q REN %WinDir%\boot.pmb boot.bmp It's cheap, but you'll be able to figure out what's going on when you look at it again a year from now

Don't forget to post your results for those of us who might be interested as well

Here's the link to Filemon

Check out the thread about MapDrive. It's what I'm using and it works great.

Well, there's nothing wrong with your construction (though you may want to use "tokens=1,*" if you just want the list of drive letters). The problem is that the character inbetween the drive letters is x000, which isn't a valid delimiter in the for command (nor have I been able, yet, to figure out what's going on there.) What exactly are you tring to get and use it for? If I know that, I might be able to better help you along.

There's several, try the search function. Also, checkout the Office 2003 Unattended tutorial.

As far as the MSI files go, it's actually quite a bit easier to figure out what's going on with them if you use a full installation creator (such as Installshield or Wise for Windows). Because they're not free, and Orca is, that's the tool that I've chosen to use when giving instructions. However, what I usually do is use an installation creator and it's wondeful debugging feature to figure things out. Then I dump the changed file and the original files (using Orca's export) and do a line-by-line compare to find the differences and write those up. (Not to mention lots of testing.) As far as removing the remaining Ghost files, you sure can do that, worked just fine for me. I definately understand about trying to shrink things down, the last time I tried to burn my Unattended DVD it was too big to fit on one disc, so I had to go through and trim things down (Office is the big one... still need to get to that I suppose.)

I'm not terribly sure myself, though I think that I remember reading somewhere a while back that, in VB.Net at least, if you are calling a function that you expect to collect a return value from, the parameters have to be in quotes. And since you're doing that here (and just echoing what is being returned) that would apply. That's the best guess as to why that I can figure.

Add parens. That made the error go away for me. WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Installation\InstallPath") WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Registration\First Name") WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Registration\Last Name") WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Registration\Organization") WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Registration\Register") WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Registration\Serial Number") WScript.Echo WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\" & dir & "\6\Registration\Validation")

An excellent question that hadn't crossed my mind before. Here's the text from the EULA for Office 2003 Pro Now, what that actually means, I have no idea whatsoever. I do, however, feel that what I have done is at least within the spirit of the law. I haven't explained how to circumvent any copy protection (activation) or upgrade checks (nor have I even tried to figure out how), I've just tried to determine/explain how to more efficiently install the software. And I'm definately not doing anything to the actual code of the product, just the mechanism for getting it installed on the computer. On that note, if someone from MS has a problem with this and lets me know, I'd be more than happy to remove the content of the post and to not play around in their MSIs anymore (instead, I guess it would be to repackaging or something icky like that). P.S. Does anyone know what federal law is on this type of thing? I just finished searching my state code, and can't really find anything that relates.