Archigos

Acer Extensa 5420, and it didn't come with physical media, but has a hidden 10GB recovery partition

I purchased a new laptop that came with Vista Home Premium and normally hate all the preinstalled crap the OEM puts on the system. I purchased a copy of Vista Ultimate through my OEM and want to switch versions on the laptop, but I want to keep some of the software that came preinstalled. I checked their website and they don't offer downloads of some programs and I don't want to lose them. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Most of the build.bat's follow roughly this idea... @ECHO OFF ECHO ------------------------------ ECHO Creating Build Folder rmdir BUILD /S /Q md BUILD ECHO ------------------------------ ECHO Building Directory... xcopy "a" "BUILD\test4\a" /E /Q /I /Y xcopy "b" "BUILD\test4\b" /E /Q /I /Y xcopy "c" "BUILD\test4\c" /E /Q /I /Y xcopy "d" "BUILD\test4\d" /E /Q /I /Y xcopy "*.xml" "BUILD\test4\" /Q /I /Y xcopy "*.txt" "BUILD" /Q /I /Y ECHO ------------------------------ ECHO Removing SVN directories from build... FOR /R BUILD %%d IN (SVN) DO @RD /S /Q "%%d" 2>NUL ECHO Build Complete - Scroll Up to check for errors. ECHO Final build is located in the BUILD directory ECHO Enjoy!!! pause Hope that helps

The main layout is this: X:\ \BatchFiles (Where I'm running the PowerShell and batch scripts) \Build (Where all the finished stuff goes) \SVN \Project \1 \2 \etc The individual Build.bat's are in the directories 1,2,etc... (I think there's like 12 total) Not exactly sure what you mean by poison characters, but the batch files mainly just move crap around and remove the .svn directories... they also call an internal image compressor. I guess if I had to I could just move the crap around via the main PS script instead of calling all the build.bat's but I wanted to do it that way in case they change something on me.

I use a lot of SVN directories for a project and thankfully each one has it's own "build.bat". What I'm trying to do is find a way to automate calling a bunch of these. The problem I'm coming across is that they each have a "pause" at the end of the file so you can view errors before it closes. I wrote up my own batch files that handles running all the needed batches and moving the results where they need to be, but I keep forgetting to sit around and watch it, so half the time I come back and it's sitting on like the second or third one waiting for me to hit a key, then I have to wait longer since it needed the input. I know enough about PowerShell to get around with the variables and the basics, but I figured using that would give me more control of the resulting files. So what I want to accomplish is making a copy of the build.bat (in case it's updated it doesn't get broke) that is missing the pause at the end of the file. The part I need help with is either the ability to remove all the pause commands from the runme.bat (copy of build.bat) or a way to inject all the information from build.bat (minus the pause commands) into a runme.bat. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I just figured I'd toss this in to help others... (Tested in XP x86) Obviously you can make scripts to semi-automate this. Tools Needed: Vista Source Windows AIK Hotfixes in .cab form The quickest way to integrate *.cab's into Vista is to open a PE Tools Command Prompt (Run it elevated if you're in Vista) Variables: %VDVD% = The Root of the Vista DVD (Local Copy) %VMount% = Directory that "install.wim" is mounted to %VUpdates% = Directory holding your .cab files Ex. (as used on my system) V:\DVD (where Local Vista source is located) V:\Mount V:\Updates Prep: Setup Variables for the three directories needed (or replace them with direct paths) 1.) Mount Image (Change Index number to match the version you want to install) imagex /mountrw %VDVD%\sources\install.wim 4 %VMount% 2.) Import Updates peimg %VMount%\windows /import=%VUpdates%\*.cab 3.) Install Updates peimg /install=*Package* %VMount%\windows 4.) Check List peimg /list /image=%VMount%\windows 5.) Repeat Step 3 with following if needed peimg /install=*Dream* %VMount%\windows peimg /install=*Client* %VMount%\windows 6.) Check Error Level ECHO %ErrorLevel% 7.) If result 0 then: Go to Step 8 If result "other" Go to Step 8a 8.) imagex /commit /unmount %VMount% 8a.) imagex /unmount %VMount% Hope this helps...

Hey guys, I ran into a small problem... I'm trying to create a disc so I can reinstall XP Tablet Edition on my system... (I have a Lenovo X41 Tablet) I borrowed a legit disc from a friend that has another tablet, changed the setupp.ini to match the one in the recovery files on my system so it would take the oem key and put the oembios files in the i386 directory. I think integrated a bunch of DriverPacks into the disc and again copied over the setupp.ini and oembios files in case they changed. I then used nLite (only for the ISO making, nothing else) and I'm trying to test it in VMWare. It's telling me the product key is invalid... (the one that your getkey file and the one I mentioned above are identical). I assume this is because the VM obviously wont have a Lenovo branded BIOS, but I wanted to check with you because I tried that key, the one on the bottom of the system and the one that he had with the disc and they all failed. I'm just a little paranoid about formatting the tablet if this isn't going to work since I need the system on a daily basis and formatting the drive will temporarily lock out the recovery partition until you install some of their crap software that modifies the MBR. (Oh, I'm about to try making an iso that's a fresh disc with just the setupp.ini and oembios files and not put in the driverpacks, to see if that works.) Any suggestions would be great.

I've mainly just skimmed this... but a quicker way of getting the SLP needed for the OEMBIOS files (this has been checked on different royalty style systems from different companies. Ex. Lenovo TabletPC, Dell XP Pro Desktop) Open up the following file in notepad or whatever and it's listed under [Version] C:\Windows\System32\oobe\oobeinfo.ini By the way... great work guys... It's helping me further my steps in ridding my Tablet of Lenovo's bloatware.