piro

Could anyone confirm this please? piro

My 2 cents, If you use Windows Server 2003 as a DC (install AD on it), keep in mind that Windows will disable write-behind cache for safety (struggled to reenable it ) and this will will make your hard disk and your machine a lot slower (it takes ages on my Win2K3 DC now to startup on P4). So, if this machine is a dedicated server, it's OK, but in your case, as you mentioned, you use the same machine as workstation, which is not feasble in such case. Moreover, the most notable features of installing AD is the centerliazed administration and Intellimirror features (software, data, and settings can follow users), and as far as I can tell, these features are of most use on large networks, you may find your self faced with a lot of work rather than simplifying matters, e.g you must install and maintain a DNS server which may not be required on such small network, also creating accounts or installing software on such network is a simple process and doesn't need installing AD to just have a single logon. AD will be a must-have in a few cases such as installing Exchange Server or Enterprise Certificate Server on your network . Actually, installing AD on such network will pay for itself only if you really want to know about Microsoft Networks, you'll learn a lot more than you may have ever thought . Anyway, this is my own point of view. piro

I think a redirection should do the task. So as far as I can tell: 1. Create a virtual directory named "D-N-A". 2. In the properties dialog of this dir, go to the "Home Directory" tab and select the "A redirection to a URL" radio button. 3. In the "Redirect to:" box, type your URL "http://www.scene-out.com/party/showproduct.php?product=54". 4. Then select the "the exact URL entered above" checkbox. Hopefuly, this is what you want. piro

OKay, I've found the cause of the disabled controls, it turned out that I added a reg tweak (reg policy) that disabled auto updates , it was something like this: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] "NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000001 I changed the value to 0 and restarted, and everything looked normal. Sorry for bothering you all and thanks for help. piro

Coolsights2000, Thanks for taking the effort to reply, however, I thought something is missing or broken after installing via the au.inf, so I decided to go to the "Windows Update" site, it asked to install the components for WU v5 and did so, and even manged to install the latest critical security updates and the "Automatic Update" tab aslo has been updated with the new colored shield icons. But what still drives my crazy is that all controls on this tab are disabled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Again any thoughts?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks all. piro

Just my 2 cents, the built-in accounts Guest & Administrator are impossible to be deleted, whether intentional or by accident or malicious code (by design). I just guess he (or...) has changed the default name to another one and can't come up with the right name. Thare are however many tools that allow you to see and reset passowrds for such accounts. piro

Man, yes it was this line to reinstall the component, many thanks for pointing this out. However, after I installed the component, I got the message "Windows Update service is unavailable" on the "Automatic Updates" tab and I followed the tip and started the the "Automatic Updates" service. The message disappeared and the "Automatic Updates" tab looked normal except one thing: all controls are in the disabled state, I even restarted the machine to make sure but the same result. Any more ideas? Really appreciate your help! piro

oftentired, Thanks for your reply. I actually did what you have just mentioned and I have NOT found the "Automatic Updates" service and also no key for this service under the reg "Services" key. It seems that the component has not been installed at all. BTW, I used this in my answer file: [Components] autoupdate=off Thanks. piro

Hello everybody, I removed the "Windows Automatic Update" component via an unatteneded script during Windows XP + SP1a setup, and now I want to install this component but I cannot find it in the Add/Remove Windows Components, I even went to the reg key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\Oc Manager\Subcomponents" and set the value "autoupdate" to 1 and rebooted but in vain. Any ideas? Thanks in advance. piro

TheWave, that's normal man, the winnt32 process copied the setup files ($win_nt$.~bt & $win_nt$.~ls) and prepared the c: drive and just existed (trying to restart computer but it's not possible in winpe). all you have to do now is restart your computer yourself, and the setup will start auomatically. (don't expect to install windows completely from winpe). piro

@ZaheerChothia That's good news, just don't forget to leave a link here to your updated guide .Really nice work here by CuBie and ZaheerChothia (in alphapetical order ). @Test Zero Do you use any optimization steps not mentioned in the guide to get finer results? If so, please share us your experience. piro

Hello, Actually, I was going to build a CD to explore things up (using Cubie guide), but once I reached the point that states you must add the hardware list of your devices to the database, I got disappointed at once, because the real benefit of running any OS from a CD is the PORTABILITY, I can use this CD in machines with different configuration for recovery purposes or whatever, but XPe will be tied to one machine or at least few ones if I decided to include more hardware (the toughest process). So, although XPe is really promising as a full featured OS, I think WinPE superceeds it by its portability. I hope someone can come up with an idea or technique to make it portable. piro

@shapeless It's not just the boot.ini that makes it work, you have to go through some steps first. If you're interested in a how-to, let me know. piro

Hello, You can achieve all your settings through a registry file with the required settings, and importing it through the cmdlines.txt file (e.g. regedit /s locale.reg). To create the required reg values, from a running Windows session, adjust the location and user locale and keyboard layouts to your liking and turn off Advanced Text Services, then open the regedit.exe and export the following keys: + [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International] to say temp1.reg This will achieve 1 and 2 + [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout] to say temp2.reg This will achieve 3 + [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF\Disable Thread Input Manager] to say temp3.reg Note: "Disable Thread Input Manager" is a value under the "CTF" key. This will achieve 4 Now, combine temp1.reg, temp2.reg, and temp3.reg into one reg file say locale.reg and import it as mentioned above. @prathapml I think you achieve only 2, notice he says location not user locale (format and standards), and from your answer file exerpt, you should end with English US as your default keyboard layout. piro

@shapeless You don't need any other boot manager, you can use the built-in NT loader of WinXP/2K3 to have a menu that gives you the option between your OS and WinPE. In fact, i have WinPE, Recovery Console, Win98SE on one partition, and WinXP on another partition and Win2K on a third partition and have only one menu (ntldr menu) that allows me selecting whichever option at startup. piro

@likuidkewl I can assure you it worked for me and it should work with anyone, keep in mind that the path i gave you to the reg key is the normal one, not after loading your hive, so just to make sure, if you loaded your software hive under the HKLM and give it the name PE_Software, the key should look like this: [HKLM\PE_Software\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}] "DefaultIcon"="explorer.ico" if it didn't work, let me know what you exactly did. piro

@thetruth excellent work here, i was always getting empty menus and sometimes the machine reboots at startup because of the limited resources of WinPE when using explorer as a shell, but now i can load explorer without any problems and load many applications as well. AWESOME piro

@tjabobom The drive letters set by WinPE are temporary, so you can assign your partition the E: drive letter and once you reboot to your normal Windows it'll reassign this partition the D: drive letter. A better solution is to build your WinPE using WinXP slipstreamed with SP2 (you'll need the latest OPK or build it using bart's pe builder), and WinPE CD will take the X: drive letter by default (this is based on users requests and also to match the same case when you boot WinPE from a RIS server). piro

@likuidkewl Just i open explorer.exe using "resource hacker" and go to the "icon group" section and save the first icon, so that i have all icon sizes with the different color depths in one icon. piro

@shapeless 1. Make sure that this partition is a primary partition and active (bootable). 2. Delete the files boot.ini and ntldr but leave ntdetect.com, then copy setupldr.bin from the minint folder to the root of the partition, then rename it to ntldr, that's all, just reboot Note: By making WinPE's partition active, you won't be able to run your OS on the other partition, so if you want to have one boot.ini (one menu) that gives you the choice between your OS and WinPE at startup, this is another long story. piro

I always solve this problem by extracting the explorer icon form explorer.exe and copying it to the system32 folder and then adding the folowing reg key (to the software hive): [HKLM\Software\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}] "DefaultIcon"="explorer.ico" piro

@jdgordon I thought you already made the required changes to txtsetup.sif. Anyway, try to complete the setup, because as I remember, it didn't work for me after the computer restarted and setup kept to ask me for missing files. I think this was an upgrade to Win98, don't remember well. piro

@jdgordon I think that when you launch setup form an existing OS, Windows expects to find the installation files under \i386, that's your i386 folder must be under the root of the CD, (this unlike when started from bootable CD). So, I think the best solution is to change BartPE folder to any other four letters (of course, after hexediting the bootsector and setupldr.bin to refere to the new folder) and reserve the i386 folder to Windows installation files. piro

@!krismark This problem is because you use incorrect settings for the /tempdrive parameter. The drive used with tempdrive must match that used with syspart, so your script should look like this: @echo off cls :: Set environmental variables set AnswerFile=i:\unattend.txt set SetupFiles=i:\i386 %SetupFiles%\winnt32 /s:%SetupFiles% /unattend:%AnswerFile% /syspart:c: /tempdrive:c: piro

@x86 Oh, that's really promising, can't wait. Let's first get a clear list of current features piro