eastonj

Tony, I tried your program and the only thing I had a problem with is that your program requires a OEMFilesPath= in the unattend where as MS seems to indicate its optional. According the ref.chm; Since my $OEM$ folders are under the /platform folder, I've never specified them with a OEMFilesPath= Otherwise, a nice program. -Jeff

I'm not using ADS, just a scripted unattend install. I got around it by doing the net time /set at each boot of PE and then doing a net time /set after win2003 was installed. The final time sets the hardware clock as its running under Win2003 at that point. From the MS transcript they implied that a previous version of PE actually did set the hardware clock. If your process doesnt need any of the features in PE2005, try an older version of PE?? -Jeff

As you've discovered, WinPE2005 wont set the hardware clock. See this page, and do a search on that page for the term "Net Time" for a MS confirmation (of sorts...). http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community...803_tn_sys.mspx Either add Net Time /set to a local server in your StartNet.cmd so it runs on each boot of PE, or find a cmd line tool to set the time via SNTP to a local time server and put that in StartNet.cmd... -Jeff

I've built two WinPE v1.6 ramdisk CD's, an x86 and x64 version to support my unattended server builds. Is there anyway to modify the winnt.sif in PE to allow for the NT style boot manager, where you could pick which ISO to load into the ramdisk? It appears that winnt.sif is just a customized version of boot.ini that would normally be used in a multiboot environment for booting different OS versions from the HD. but boot.ini uses arc path for selecting the OS. We want to send out a single CD to remote sites that would be built by connecting to the servers RILO board. Thus, nobody would actually be on site to switch discs depending on the need for a 32bit or 64bit PE environment. -Jeff

Same here. I see everything but this new version of WAIK... -Jeff

From what I've seen with WinPEx64, the win32 subsystem simply isnt in there. 32bit programs that work in the WOW64 on Win2003 x64 wont work on WinPEx64. -Jeff

Are you using the on board RAID? See the note on the Support Matrix about the ML310's LSI RAID chip. Not supported. HP SSSTK Support Matrix -Jeff

I'm running a similar setup on PE2005 with no problems. First boot figures out what the hardware is and runs Conrep then ACU. Second boot does Diskpart, Format, then kicks off WinSetup. Here's my relevant parts; Diskpart command; DiskPart /s %PATH%\DiskPart.txt > NUL Diskpart; select disk 0 clean create partition primary select partition 1 Select volume 1 assign letter c select partition 1 active exit Format command; Format C: /FS:NTFS /Q /V:OS /Y > NUL Setup command; WINNT32.exe /s:\\%SERVER%\%SHARE%\i386 /unattend:%PATH%\Temp\UNATTEND.TXT /noreboot /syspart:c Drivers section of unattend; [OEMBootFiles] HpCISSx2.inf HpCISSs2.sys cpqcissm.inf cpqcissm.sys cpqarry2.inf cpqarry2.sys symmpi.inf Symmpi.sys LsiCsb6.inf LsiCsb6.sys txtsetup.oem [MassStorageDrivers] "Server 2003 Driver for Smart Array SAS/SATA Controllers" = OEM "Smart Array 6i, 641, 642, 6400, 6400EM Controllers" = OEM "Smart Array 5i, 532, 5312 Controllers" = "OEM" "Smart Array 5300 Controller" = "OEM" "Compaq Smart Array Controllers" = "OEM" "LSI Logic PCI SCSI/FC MPI Driver (Server 2003 32-bit)" = "OEM" "CSB-6 Ultra ATA-100 IDE RAID Controller (Windows 2000/Server 2003)" = OEM "IDE CD-ROM (ATAPI 1.2)/PCI IDE Controller" = "RETAIL" "Compaq Drive Array" = "RETAIL" I specifed the matching .inf files for each driver. You did write your own custom txtsetup.oem to include all the drivers, right? -Jeff

Nevermind... MS now admits its a bug in SP1.

Has anyone else seen this? I got the Win2003 w/SP1 integrated from MS and created an unattend build for it using the I386 files as the core and layering all my post install stuff from my original Win2003 (sp0) build. For some reason, with this build, there is a desktop.ini file left in the /Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop folder that looks like this; [LocalizedFileNames] Security Configuration Wizard.lnk=@%SystemRoot%\system32\ws03res.dll,-69500 Since its in the All Users\Desktop folder, it shows up on everyones desktop. Disabling the firewall, SCW and even DEP in the unattend file doesnt make this go away. It seems to be happening in the OS build somewhere. I deleted my GUIRunOnce and even renamed my CMDLines.txt but it still shows up.

When I couldnt find a satisfactory utility to get the mac address into a variable for my server builds, I turned to Kixtart. This small script is used with kix v2.33, the last version of kix for DOS. Its small enough that it fits on the network boot disk and I use it for setting the workstation name, and creating a network temp directory to store files during the build process. Ugly but it works.

For our server unattend builds, we use the Compaq/HP Smart Start Scripting Toolkit. It has a program called StateMgr.exe that you can use in the pre-build phase to write a variable that survives reboots. I'm guessing it writes its value to CMOS. This works great for server builds, and allows for cleanly setting up the server arrays and partitions prior to starting the traditional MS build. I am making a similar build for home use to build Win2000 Prof or WinXP, but I'm missing the ability to use StateMgr for boot control when I create the partition and format it prior to the build. StateMgr doesnt work on desktops. What I have done is to script a manual process where I have to select what build phase I'm in. It works but its not very clean, and I have to remember to pop out my bootable CD build disk during the MS setup, otherwise when it reboots after the NTFS conversion, it boots back into my DOS code on the CD. Is there a similar type of DOS utility available that works on desktops?