DarkScythe

Hello, I've been going through the process of recovering from a hard drive failure, which gave me an excuse to reinstall a fresh copy of XP since I had been meaning to do it for a while. Anyway, I nLited a copy of XP from a Technet image (used a valid key) and I'm not sure if I might've unwittingly set an option incorrectly somewhere. As I understand it, the wallpaper list (under display properties > desktop) polls the %systemroom%\Web\Wallpapers directory by default, and I can verify this as true from memory, as well as my laptop which I also used an nLited XP (although I didn't set nearly as many options.) Anyway, my problem now is that my PC's XP appears to be polling not just the default folder, but also the My Pictures folder. This in itself is not a bad thing, as I want to point it to there anyway; the problem is that it's polling every single subfolder as well. Since I place all my photos from my camera in there, as well as other miscellaneous images which aren't wallpapers, this results in thousands of images being listed in the display properties, 99% of which are not the correct size for wallpaper usage. Is there any way for me to correct this? I'd like to limit it only to a specific subfolder within the My Pictures folder (X:\My Documents\My Pictures\Wallpapers - I have moved my 'My Documents' and 'My Pictures' folder to another drive to prevent a system drive crash from eating all my data.) I don't mind so much that it continues to poll the default folder, although it would be nice if it didn't, but my main priority is getting it to not scan every subfolder in My Pictures. Thanks in advance for any tips.

Thanks for the response; Right, I know those are the options, I just wasn't sure of what exactly to do, and the guides were pretty tough to figure out. I managed to get by with the Vista installs because I understood lagely what each tool was doing - I'm having a hard time figuring out what the plethora of tools being used here actually do. I did manage to solve the USB booting problem - I had forgotten I disabled bootable USB drives in the BIOS. unfortunately, it assigned the USB drive C: probably because the replacement hard drive I plugged in wasn't formatted yet. It was too much work for me to figure out how exactly to proceed from there though, so I broke down and just made a CD, as I don't have a few days to figure out the guides.

Well, for some reason WinPE will not boot. The system gives me a boot disk error, even though I've selected the USB-HDD as first-boot device. Poking around the tools in the U_XP_SET folder, it seems like every single one of those applications needs to completely format the key, which would mean I'd lose the WinPE2.0 already on it. This is immensely confusing.. I'm not understanding the guides when I am trying to pick up from where I am, instead of starting from scratch. ...Maybe I should just buy a dvd-rw or something.

Thanks for the information, wimb. That looks incredibly complicated though.. And I thought Vista was bad, lol. What's all that stuff with LiveXP, Win2003 and GRUB4DOS? Is all that really needed? Part of the reason I wanted to re-use the WinPE2.0 on my existing USB drive was to reduce some of the work, but it seems just as complicated as starting from scratch.

Hello, My main system hard drive recently died, so I have the joy of reinstalling Windows on it. I no longer have any free optical media to use, so I figured another method would be to install from USB. I had previously installed Vista from my USB drive a few times, and of course for that, I needed WinPE2.0 or something on it first. In looking around for ways to install XP from a USB flash drive, it seems people need all manners of formatting utilities, and at least 3 different preinstallation environments. I would like to avoid unnecessary formatting and fuss if possible, since I already have a USB drive that I use for installing Vista, and I wanted to know if I could simply remove the Vista files, and drop XP into the drive, since it already contains WinPE2.0. If not, what is the simplest method? Using the USB Multiboot 10 thing listed in the sticky? (Even though I don't need to multi-boot anything.. just plain XPSP3, and nothing else.) In the end I'm going to try to slipstream a bunch of drivers (AHCI, etc) into an XPSP3 image I'm creating in nLite. Unattended is not needed, and I'd actually avoid it since I don't need to automate anything - I just need a way to install from a USB drive. The Vista USB drive is formatted in NTFS with WinPE2.0 on it. I have another USB drive that I formatted using the HP boot disk tool in FAT32 and have the MS-DOS boot files on it, but I'm not sure if I can use that one for XP either. Thanks for any clarification.

Hmm, actually it looks like I spoke too soon. Simply rebooting does NOT solve this problem. (I had opened the programs and tried to make them load before rebooting.) I reinstalled again and tried rebooting without touching anything, and both programs still would not load. It seems sysprep is erasing some settings it needs, because I entered the Avast license key before sysprep, and now it says there is no license key. Also, Spybot says TeaTimer is not set to auto-start, even though it is set to auto-start when I installed it in audit mode. I think I still need to be able to install these two programs during Vista setup.. Is there any way for me to do this? Also, I assume instead of editing the XML file, I can use WSIM for the same effect? When will this shutdown command be executed? Thank you for the help.. This problem is very annoying.

Just an update, I have installed Vista with the image I just captured using the above method. As expected, upon the first login after the OOBE, Avast and Spybot do not run. They are normally supposed to auto-start. Trying to manually start Avast makes it ask me for a license key (I was trying to run it with the 60-day trial) but it seems sysprep may have deleted something about that, so it does not believe I have any more time left to demo the software and insists on a license key. Since the key is free, I decided to register one with a random email address and enter it. I'm not sure if Sysprep would remove the key or not though, I'll have to try it again. Spybot itself will launch, but requires administrator rights to immunize (known issue.) However, trying to start TeaTimer.exe (a part of SpyBot) says it needs administrator rights too, and will lock up. These are the same symptoms I experienced the first time. However, this is as far as I went the first time, and thinking it was a busted install, I scrapped it at this point. This time, I decided to try one more step: reboot again. After reboot, Spybot managed to load TeaTimer OK and Avast's system tray icons have started fine as well. The last inconsistency I can see is that the Firefox extension I installed in audit mode got removed (It is needed for the Fingerprint software.) It seems an additional reboot is required (how could I have overlooked something so simple!) after the OOBE for all the applications I installed in audit mode to work properly. Is there a way I can automate this with WSIM to automatically reboot the machine after the users has chosen a username/password (or I guess completed) the OOBE? Or is the last step of the answer file right as OOBE loads? (I'm not sure if rebooting during the OOBE, before a user enters a username and logs in for the first time works or not to fix this problem.) Also, how would I force the Firefox extension to persist through a sysprep run?

Yes, actually, but I don't remember what exactly they were. I'm redoing the steps now to re-create it. Right now, I've re-installed my older Vista image, and then boot to audit mode. I've installed: Intel Chipset Drivers nVIDIA Display Driver Dell Power Config Dell Quickset Driver Dell Webcam Manager Dell Fingerprint Software Firefox 3 Avast 4.8 Spybot 1.6.2 Java 6u13 OpenOffice.org 3.1 After that, I rebooted and installed offline definition update packages for Avast, Spybot and Windows Defender. No problems yet, but then I did sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown to prepare the system for imaging. Spybot detected some registry changes which I accepted for all of them, but near the end, a message popped up asking to uninstall something (I don't know what - Spybot does not do this) and after that, 2 errors popped up but I could not read them because sysprep (I guess it finished) shut down the machine. Perhaps I can read them if I do sysprep /oobe /generalize /quit instead? Anyway, right now I am booted to WinPE and using imagex to re-image the drive to follow up with the first question.

Yes, I have used Audit mode to install SP1 and SP2 onto the base image. However, I don't think I can reliably install applications in this mode. In my first post I said I had tried it already, and it failed. After installing SP2 in audit mode (and rebooting) I installed all my applications and extra drivers, rebooted again for changes to finish. Then I tried twice: First time: sysprep /generalize = Does not work, 2 programs (Spybot and Avast) become broken and will not load. Second time: sysprep, NO generalize = Still does not work. Same problem as above. Any other ideas, or did I do it wrong?

Hello, With some searching, I can see this question is asked quite often around here, but pardon my asking again. I am trying to get a laptop up and running for my parents, but prior to this, I have never touched Vista, as every machine I have runs XP SP3. I avoided Vista for whatever reason, but now that it's here, I need to suck it up and start learning it. My main problem was that the laptop came with Vista RTM (!) so I had to figure out how to update it. Since I had made a custom restore disc for my own laptop (with XP) I thought I'd make something similar for my parents. Unfortunately, it seems everything is quite different. So far, after a month of tinkering and experimenting, I've gotten what seems to be a working base image. I have used the Vista Ultimate restore disc provided by Dell as a base, to which I've installed both SP1 and SP2 on using the reverse integration method documented on Winbeta.org (Since VUI and vLite do not support slipstreaming of SP2) and recaptured the image using imagex. I then used vLite to slipstream into that image IE8, Language pack for IE8 (I extracted the langpack MSU from the IE8 installer, although there was one file vLite wouldn't recognize so I left it out.. doesn't seem to have any adverse effects though) as well as an MUI (extracted the files from the lp.cab.) I have also slipstreamed in a couple drivers specific to their laptop. Having tested this base image so far, it seems to work - I can install Vista properly, and drivers, as well as MUI and new-language IE8 works fine. My problem now is that, having gotten this far, I'm trying to round it out by pre-installing a bunch of applications into the install before the OOBE. I have no idea how to proceed. I found FireGeier's guide, and followed it, however it keeps failing at some point. After some digging, it seems users here say that the guide is outdated and will not work for SP1 (and by extension, I assume SP2 as well.) There seem to be a few workarounds, but I'm not sure which is the best method for me. I wish to avoid using any more external programs (Just whatever I can tack on in WSIM if possible, although I barely understand how to use that program either.) In one attempt, I booted into audit mode and attempted to install everything there, followed by a sysprep /generalize and a re-image. However, this method does not work as expected. Most of the programs installed OK, but Spybot and Avast became broken. This led me to try FireGeier's method, but since it's out of date, does not work. I have the installers for everything extracted to a folder as well as having found all the commands to run them all silently, I just want to know which is the best method for installing them. Thanks in advance.