Vann

Some settings (e.g., desktop icon settings) are only applied to the registry upon logging out. Try using regshot to take a snapshot, apply the desired setting, logging out and back in, then running regshot a second time, and compare. That should show what's going on.

The OEMPnPDriversPath works as if you pointed Windows to those directories when running "Add New Hardware" from the Control Panel, only Windows now looks in those directories every time it finds new hardware during unattended setup. So, if none of those drivers work for your hardware then Windows will simply skip over it.

So if I get infected by a virus because of an undiscovered vulnerability in, say, Winsock, Microsoft is not responsible and should just wait until the virus writers stop writing viruses? No serious OS takes this attitude, not even Windows.

Mardsen, that's not what I wrote at all. Read it again. What I did say was that MS is responsible when third-party applications break the OS. If SP2 makes changes in the OS for the better then those changes should be made. I'm not sure why you're being so defensive.

When a bootable Windows CD is created the filenames are all capitalized, so I don't think that's the issue. Are the other directories copied?

I'm not sure what you mean by "responsible for their own code," but MS is definitely responsible for issues in the OS whereby third-party applications can cause breakage. That is, unless we're to believe security is tantamount to hiding one's head in the sand. And, I'd like to point out, the bug referenced above has nothing to do with clueless users. However, if mocking end-users helps you rationalize whatever issues you might have when discussing this topic seriously then by all means go ahead.

That was quite the apology for Microsoft, there, jroc. The fact of the matter is, there are problems with SP2 that should have been dealt with before final. Heck, Microsoft has already released a ;884020]hotfix for SP2 not a week after it was marked "final." To continue your fallacious car analogy, if a manufacturer released a car that required a tuneup only a week after purchase they wouldn't say say, "well, we didn't make you buy the car." They would recall the car.

Unfortunately what flags installers expect are completely nonstandard in Windows and vary drastically from application to application. Moreover, documentation on what these flags are exactly is oftentimes very sparse. My only advice: Google is your friend.

As long as none of the applications you install expect those files to be there then it is safe. The vast majority of applications wouldn't, and you'd probably know if one of them did.

It's probably not that SP1 was already integrated, but that the OEM did something unorthodox to the CD. Oftentimes patches are applied or other changes made that make slipstreaming OEM CDs a difficult, if not impossible, experience. Did you slipstream SP1 onto the OEM CD? If so, there might be hope, but if the OEM pre-applied it I'm not sure what can be done. Other people might have more information.

I think File and Print Sharing and QoS can be disabled through winnt.sif, but I'm not sure how. If anyone has an answer I'd be very grateful, too.

Why would I need to add any registry settings for Firefox? Does the Firefox installer not do that for some reason? Thanks for the information about flash, though.

If your SP2 installation displays a version of Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158 then it is the final build. You can see the actual build number by right-clicking on C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe and then clicking on the "Version" tab. Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about. The machine is running SP1 with some hotfixes. So this machine is XP build 1151. On an SP2 machine this string would read "5.1.2600.2180"

During the T-13 stage of unattended setup I want to install the Mozilla/Firefox Flash plugin. I have two questions about this. First, I downloaded the "corporate" flash/shockwave MSI files. They install silently very well, but don't include the Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape plugin. I know, for example, with Sun's JRE there's an option of "MOZILLA=1" that you can pass to the MSI. Is there anything similar to this for Flash? Second, since the above wasn't working very well, I tried to play around with the normal Flash Player installer. It turns out if you run the setup program with a /s switch it installs the plugin just fine, but at the end it opens up a browser window informing me that I just installed Flash. As much as I appreciate Macromedia's lovely advertisements and informative website, I'd like to stop this since I'm going to be running the setup program during the unattended setup. Is there any switch to prevent the browser window from opening at the end? An answer to either of these would solve my problem. Of course, I'd also be grateful if someone had another solution to installing Flash without any user interaction. Thanks.

I have some problems with your post. First, what is the advantage of copying the ntuser.dat file as opposed to importing the registry settings during install? As I'm sure you know, during the T-13 stage of the installation where people should be importing their registry settings, the Default User's registry hive is mounted at HKEY_CURRENT_USER. So you are, in fact, modifying the Default User profile. What advantage does your method have? Instead of importing some registry settings you copy a file. I don't see how one is materially more difficult or cumbersome than the other. Your problem, as you said, was that your tweaks were unorganized, but that's your problem. Personally, I organize mine in an arbitrary number of separate files, put them in one directory in $OEM$, and have cmdlines.txt call a batch file which imports all the .reg files in the aforementioned directory. I just add or delete a registry file to that directory in $OEM$ and I'm done. Moreover, as you said, you still need HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE tweaks, which means even with your method you'll be retaining a repository of registry tweaks. This seems to be creating two spots for failure. Second, won't your ntuser.dat now contain machine specific information? There are plenty of things in the registry that are machine specific and vary even on fresh installs of XP. What if I want to install my CD on a Pentium II 400MHz machine, a Quad Xeon machine, and also in VMWare? Can you guarantee your ntuser.dat will work for all these situations? Because I can guarantee importing registry files at T-13 will. Third, how do you know the default settings in the Default profile won't change between hotfixes or service packs? Is the ntuser.dat created from a vanilla XP install the same as the one created with a slipstreamed SP1 or SP2? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if MS changed it in the future. Across versions, of course, there's no reason for them to be the same, but there is reason to expect my registry tweaks to be similar between Windows 2003 and XP. These are the major -- in my mind -- that I thought of. If I sound unduly harsh, don't take it personally; I'm just trying to be critical. I guess my complaints can be summed up with the question: "Why is this better?"

I tried the stuff in Nologic's link, and it doesn't write uninstall information to the registry or copy Desktop/Start Menu/Quick Launch icons. Aside from those issues (and the fact that the UI looks like it's from Windows 3.1) it seems to work fine.

For future reference, Microsoft's service packs contain all previous critical updates, INCLUDING THOSE PROVIDED BY OTHER SERVICE PACKS. So, if you slipstream SP2 onto a vanilla XP CD you will not need any additional critical updates.

You could always try experimenting. In the hour and a half since you posted you could have had your answer. Also, it's not polite to demand things from strangers.

This is exactly what we do where I work, and is the reason why I got involved with unattended installs in the first place. Note that you cannot create and format the D partition on the fly using only an unattended install. You'll have to use a commercial utility or something like BartPE to do that.

The best place to change it is in the winnt.sif file, because "changing themes" is not as simple as specifying a new theme files. In fact, if you look at the .theme file it is vaguely similar to a .reg file. Anyhow, add this to your winnt.sif file if you want the Windows Classic theme and the Classic Start Menu: [shell] DefaultStartPanelOff=Yes DefaultThemesOff=Yes

A hint: Search for files containing the desired string. It is indeed generated dynamically and can be changed. I assume that's what you're asking about.

It looks like SP2 will be released some time tomorrow. Here is the source.

Did you set OemPreinstall="Yes" in your winnt.sif file?

While I understand the motives behind moving all of "Documents and Settings" to a new hard drive, I don't understand why you'd give each user their own partition. Or are these physically distinct drives? If they're just partitions you should use disk quotas; that's why they're there.

No, you can tell the unattended install to just use the first partition it sees, and to not touch it in any way. The options are Repartition="No" and FileSystem=* I think.