GnarlyC

You might take a look at these - http://adminbromo.blogspot.com/2006/10/uni...mage-guide.html http://blog.case.edu/djc6/2005/09/22/imagi...t_hals_wsysprep http://koti.mbnet.fi/olljanat/guides/gener...age_from_xp.php Alan

Thanks! That should be helpful. Here's something that I found last week that scans a folder for drivers, and then it adds them to the driver path in the registry. We no longer have to maintain the 'OEMDriversPath' entry in sysprep.ini!!! http://www.vernalex.com/tools/spdrvscn/index.shtml Alan

I have gotten this to work really well now. Thank you for your help. Here's what I did - 1) Installed the Windows 2003 SP1 OPK from MS. 2) Followed the help file for customizing PE. 3) Updated OSD (via SMS MMC), pointing it to the customized PE from step #2. 4) That's it! Works like a charm. Another one of many things that seem so simple and easy to do after I spent three days just finding the easy way to do it... Alan

Thank you. I have taken your instructions and printed them out so that I can read them more thoroughly. I also read another post in which someone just copied the *.inf,*.cat, and *.sys files for some drivers into the appropriate folders and rebuilt the .iso. I have tried that, but it did not work. I really thought that I had updated OSD FP to the last update, but I am trying to confirm either way now. There was an update in October of 2006. Thanks you for all of your help. Alan

I have successfully integrated 'Third Party' drivers into the normal WinPE image that comes with WAIK, but I cannot seem to integrate them into the SMS Operating System Deployment image. It is a different beast, yet is still WinPE. Has anyone on here done this? Or do you have another solution? I'm thinking that maybe the OSD version is a different version of PE since the directory structure is different. The other thing that I have thought of is to modify the 'normal' PE to run the programs that the OSD WinPE runs... I have not tried this yet though. I have years of experience with BartPE, but have just started trying to use WinPE recently. When trying to integrate them into the OSD image, I get - "The image directory specified is not a valid Windows PE image." "PEIMG failed to complete the operation with status code 0x8007000d." I have searched for this with not much luck. Thanks for any help! Alan

We do this at my workplace all of the time. We have Dell GX110s - GX280s, Dell Inspirion 500s, Latitude 1100s, IBM Thinkpad R51s, & ThinkCentre A51 towers. At least with the models that we have - you just build the Ghost image on a non-hyperthreading PC. The PCs that are hyperthreading capable will not have the multi-processor HAL after Ghosting, so hyperthreading will not work. We don't really care about that, so that's what we do. It works GREAT! (i.e. multiprocessor HAL will blue screen uniprocessor PCs, but the uniprocessor HAL will not blue screen multiprocessor PCs. This doesn 1) Install Windows, apps, etc. 2) Create a folder called c:\sysprep 3) Copy sysprep.exe, etc. to c:\sysprep 4) Create a c:\sysprep\sysprep.ini file (similar to WINNT.SIF for unattended installs) 5) Create a drivers folder in c:\sysprep (I just used Bashrat the Sneaky's driver packs - so I called the subfolder 'D'.) 6) Edit the sysprep.ini by adding an OEMDRIVERSPATH option pointing to the drivers in the c:\sysprep\D folder. 7) run sysprep. Select 'use mini-setup' & reseal. This is a summary. Please read the more detailed directions about unattended installs. This is basically the same as far as the OEMDRIVERSPATH option. I also found it useful to make a sysprep folder with all of the drivers & .inf already done, and copy it to a network share. Alan

Ok, I have one version of BartPE that is the main version that we use. It has most of the tools that we need, and loads pretty fast. Everyonce in a while, it is nice to have IE, etc., so I built an XPE version on the same CD. When I did that, a couple of the plugins had trouble, and there are XPEish plugins that don't work without XPE. So, right off, there are different programs between the two version. I just copied the folders so that all programs for both versions were in the Programs folder on the CD. Then I tried adding the RAMLoader version of BartPE. Now, things just don't act right. My thinking is that having multiple copies might make things right. I could be wrong. That was just my first instinct, and I haven't really had time to troubleshoot...

I have a multiboot CD that was working well until I started trying to add multiple versions of BartPE. I am using DISKEMU. Can someone point me in the right direction as far as how to have multiple PROGRAMS folders. That seems to be my problem. So far, I have been able to use just one because they are fairly close to the same. Now, I am trying to add the RAMLoader version, and it's not so close... I have searched the forums wihtout any luck. GnarlyC

Ghost Corp. should have ghost.exe not ghostpe.exe...

I have never tried this myself, but there are other posts that explain this pretty well. You cannot make multiple partitions with setup. You will have to boot into WinPE or BartPE and use diskpart, etc. from there. Then you can invoke a script to install the OS. Search for posts that explain how to do an unattended install from WinPE or BartPE. It can all be made to be unattended, there's just a few extra steps involved past editing winnt.sif. Hope that helps, GnarlyC

These have worked well from my unattended CD, so I will try putting them in RunOnceEx and rebooting. That's a good idea. Thanks. GnarlyC

start /wait \\server\VPHOME\CLT-INST\WIN32\setup.exe /qn start /wait \\server\install\AdbeRdr60_enu_full.exe -p"-s /v\"/qn\"" start /wait \\server\install\Notes\setup.exe -s -F1 \\server\install\Notes\setup.iss start /wait \\server\install\CA_51\setup.exe -s -f1 \\server\install\CA_51\setup.iss start /wait \\server\install\voloview\volovep.exe -s -f1 \\server\install\voloview\setup.iss start /wait \\server\msoffice\setup.exe /qn start /wait \\server\install\tightvnc-1.2.9-setup.exe /silent start /wait \\server\install\install_aim.exe /s start /wait \\server\install\install_armor.bat start /wait \\server\install\auto_disk_maint\install.bat start /wait \\server\install\auto_disk_maint\schedule.bat xcopy \\server\install\*.url "c:\Documents and settings\All Users\Desktop\" ECHO. ECHO DONE! shutdown -f -r -t 5 This is the actual install.bat file. I'm not doing anything fancy, really. I will test it again, and narrow down which apps install and which ones don't. These are Win2K Pro PCs. Here's what everything is: 1) SAV 9.0 2) Acrobat Reader 6 3) Lotus Notes 5.08 4) IBM Client Access 5.1 5) VoloView Express 2.x 6) Office 2000 7) TightVNC 9) AOL IM 10) ARMOR - old DOS 'database' program that still runs the company... 11) copies (ps)shutdown & autodefrag commands to c:\windows 12) starts 'at' job to schedule disk cleanup, defrag, & chkdsk 13) copies web links to desktop Thanks for the help. I will post again soon after doing another test. GnarlyC

Very nice. I just might have to give that a try. I have been trying to do a similar thing using network shares, but haven't quite worked it out yet. Some apps install fine, others don't. Keep up the good work! GnarlyC

What I am trying to do is just take my 'install.bat' file and run it from a fresh OS install across the network. Say, for instance, one of my customers buys a new Dell with the OS already on it. I just want to install the apps that they need, instead of starting completely over. So far, some apps install, and some don't. I think that it might be a Windows File Protection problem, but I am not sure. I tried installing the apps one at a time. I also tried instlalling them after disabling WFP. If anyone has had experience doing this, I would appreciate any advice. Thank you, GnarlyC

If it is connected to the PC, then XP should install it. If it is shared from another PC, then you can use a VB script to install it. Set WshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") PrinterPath = "\\server\HPLaserJ" WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection PrinterPath GnarlyC