StarGazer2112

:thumbup GREAT JOB !!! This puzzle is finally getting solved ! The time Bill & his Commets make us waste... I would put more thumbs up but the board doesn't allow... Thank you very much fellow !

Well, I was trying to make a technical discussion, you started the passionate personal attacks.

What's the point in the syntax being correct and the TEMPORAL ORDER of things being wrong ? Have you ever used a compiler ? Try to get some code and mix up the lines too see if can get something that works. So now syntax is everything is needed ? All right, scramble all the paragraphs in your favorite book randomly and let's see if it retains sense. Fyi: Reading very fast it's just a good thing when you can understand the meaning of what you're reading. It's like not chewing your food. Fyi either: I maybe new to this forum but I'm not new to nLite and have been dealing with programming since there were no PCs, in the eight bit/one kilobyte memory/assembly programming days so I've learned a thing or two.

TranceEnergy, You haven't read the whole first post or perhaps you did it in a hurry... ( Have you noticed that nhelper.exe is called again after it's deleted ? ) If in a function gives a buffer overflow only after sometimes it's called do you think it's acceptable to say "why didn't you restarted your system between calls of this program" ? It's a similar situation. A bit disturbing to see someone who hasn't analyzed things thoroughly jumping to criticize who did it and was crystal clear in exposing it's findings.

Try an utility called silent .NET Maker or SNM for short. It builds administrative installations of .NET versions with service packs included all in a single executable that you can use for integration later. But .NET is VEEEERY troublesome. I'm still having trouble with 3.0 and trying to figure out the integration of the stupid thing. Aaron Stebner's WebLog is a good source of information to try to deal with this mess Micro$$$$oft provided us.

Johnhc, I thought that everybody who would dare to mess up with something like rebuilding your OS installation media would have at least the skills and understanding to do this little song and dance with the .inf file. I'm probably wrong. But I still think that this recomendation of always using a fresh copy of the files/folders is like a company that builds cars saying "hey, the brakes on this model behaves strangelly sometimes, so please, do not go over 5 miles per hour and you should be safe". The kind of stuff Micro$$$oft does a lot and make wanna byte my own ears ( to keep the language acceptable ). Based on my experience as a programmer I firmly believe this is a conceptual bug.. Maybe I should contact the author of nLite but I also think it's good to discuss this things in the open. Bye

Johnhc, It sounds like you didn't understood what I was trying to do in my post: I was posting a solution to the problem. YES, I ran nLite on my source some dozens of times, as I always did without "many varied and bizarre errors" on previous versions. I wouldn't get near nLite if I had to start from scratch every time. Reinvent the wheel on a weekly basis consumes time that I don't have and it's just plain stupid. A bizarre error is what is called by tradition a bug in the program and I was pointing out where is it, by interpreting the command lines in the nLite.inf file. The nhelper.exe is a replacement command line utility that nLite uses instead of the standard windows cmd.exe. As I wrote, the first lines that issue the delete command are executing a housekeeping job by deleting temporary files generated during the installation process. In the end of the housekeeping the programmer of nLite decided that nhelper.exe should delete itself for the job to be complete. The problem comes when you do other slipstreamings that ADD more tasks for nhelper.exe to execute, like in the fourth and fifth lines you've posted of your nLite.inf: HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s05",0x00020000,"nhelper moveex ""%17%\syssbck.dll"" ""%11%\syssetup.dll""" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s06",0x00020000,"nhelper moveex ""%17%\syssbck.inf"" ""%17%\syssetup.inf""" This two issue moveex commands which are replacing syssetup.dll and syssetup.inf with non-standard versions, probably to skip OOBE and/or do other tweaks in the end of the setup process ( GUI stage ) specified by you in your nLite options. There are some situations when the delete command on nhelper.exe is there and some where it is not. That's the essence of a bug: a situation where sometimes the program do the right stuff and sometimes doesn't. I've been programming for 28 years now, seen it a lot, been there, done that. So I was pointing it out, hoping it helps. Bye

Hello everybody, After a long time without slipstreaming I had to do it and encountered the annoying "nHelper not found" error ( that's not as rare as many would like or say it is ) . Researching a little bit I think I have found where is nLite doing the wrong stuff that leads to the error. Looking inside the compressend nLite.INF file, in the \I386 folder of the slipstreamed windows, I've found the following: HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s03",0x00020000,"nhelper delete ""%10%\SET3.TMP""" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s04",0x00020000,"nhelper delete ""%17%\INFCACHE.1""" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s07",0x00020000,"nhelper delete ""%11%\nhelper.exe""" HKU,".DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","_nltide_3",0x00020000,"rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSectionEx nLite.inf,C,,4,N" HKU,".DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","_nltide_2",0x00000000,"regsvr32 /s /n /i:U shell32" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s05",0x00020000,"nhelper moveex ""%17%\syssbck.dll"" ""%11%\syssetup.dll""" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_s06",0x00020000,"nhelper moveex ""%17%\syssbck.inf"" ""%17%\syssetup.inf""" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_00",0x00020000,"nhelper rd /q /s """"%SystemRoot%\eHome""""" HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_01",0x00020000,"nhelper rd /q /s """"%SystemRoot%\System32\ime""""" ( This is, of course, just an excerpt, there's a lot more lines ) If we take a look at the third line, we'll see that nhelper.exe IT'S DELETING ITSELF ! That's probably because of a previous slipstreaming. nLite seems to be doing some housekeeping, i.e., on the first slipstreaming, when it has done all it is supposed to do and is no longer needed, it "takes out the trash", deleting everithing that it's taking out space without reason, including itself, which is good programming practice after all. The buggy behaviour comes when you do another slipstreaming over the first and this second ( or third or whatever ) needs nhelper.exe to more stuff, like removing components or setting up unattended options. It includes more lines referencing the program but it will not be there anymore ! Patching the file, by removing the line or moving it to the end corrects the problem. To do that you must extract the nlite.inf file from the nlite.in_ file, using any normal compression program ( i've tried 7-Zip, WinRaR and IZArc and they all have worked ), edit the file and re-compress it and that last it's the annoying part: you''l have to do it with the M$ old-timer, console based compress.exe ( at least I couldn't manage to do it in any other way ) and, OF COURSE, put it back where it belongs: the \i386 folder of your slipstreamed windows. Doing that everytime you slipstream will be a huge annoyance so let's hope it gets fixed. Bye