os2fan2

Put registry into the control panel, along with tweak ui. This is c_regedit.cpl Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{819C8FC5-3D36-4d9a-B626-5CE2AD811463}] @="Registry" "InfoTip"="Registry Editor" "{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2"=dword:00000005 ; fiddle with the end -05 to change the location in the control categories. [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{819C8FC5-3D36-4d9a-B626-5CE2AD811463}\DefaultIcon] @="regedit.exe,0" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{819C8FC5-3D36-4d9a-B626-5CE2AD811463}\Shell] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{819C8FC5-3D36-4d9a-B626-5CE2AD811463}\Shell\Open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{819C8FC5-3D36-4d9a-B626-5CE2AD811463}\Shell\Open\command] @="regedit.exe" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\{819C8FC5-3D36-4d9a-B626-5CE2AD811463}] @="Add Registry to Control Panel"

On my win9x cd, i have a copy of DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 for the end of upgrades and also to install various things (eg bitmaps, some apps). You could stick a copy of win95/98 install files in \WIN98 or \WIN95, and then click on that directory for the upgrade. Another way is to install it from a PE built from the same version of Windows, or a later one. This works too. W

Try using something like one of these programs. They will boot cdroms even when there is no support for booting cdroms, or you dont want to flip to that part. http://bootcd.narod.ru/index_e.htm look for 'bcdl' http://btmgr.webframe.org/ They're all tiny proggies, and make only one diskette. Once booted, you can pop out the diskette. I have used it on Windows NT4, NT5, OS/2, etc. Saves fiddling with the bios in any case. W

The file is actually WINME.WMV, it's a 10 MB file in the win9x directory (ie in the 'necessary files', but it won't be played if it isn't found. Ponch's copy of ME prolly does not have WINME.WMV there.

There's a big AVI file on the setup. If you delete this, then it won't play, and windows install goes onto the next thing. Have done it myself.

While microsoft made a commercial decision not to provide support for slipstreaming in NT4 (it first appeared in SP2 of w2k), it is none the less possible to reduce the pain of installation of NT4 on modern hardware. Essentially, you put *some* of the files of NT4sp6a into the base install, and then patch sp6a. What this effectively acheives is an NT4 that has every update patched in the service pack. When you follow the instructions as given in the post, you can install NT4 on modern hardware, as long as the system drive is completely in the first 8 GB. The first install should use the SP6a versions of NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM, but you can replace these with a Win2k or XP version in the actual service pack. You can, for example install NT4 before or after any of the other versions of Windows. The only really dependant thing you have to keep an eye on is to ensure that you put SP6a on before you boot Winxp/2k, and that you end up with a boot loader from the latest version of windows you may want to use (eg win2k3 if it is in the offing). http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=82169 You can also integrate one of the early fix-packs as well, into the base install, at the same time the service pack goes on. This is useful for replacing bits of NT4 with later features from different operating systems, adding DLL files etc. For example, the cmd.exe from W2K works quite well under Windows NT4, and has an extended command set. SOL.EXE is also worth the upgrade, too. QBASIC can be upgraded to v1.1 from MS-DOS 6, as this supports the help.com command. You can also build a source for installing extra features, which contains the latest files in an i386 directory. Doing this means that you do not have to redo the servicepack every time you change something. "Your mouse has moved: Windows needs to reboot to update these changes" Wendy

You could do something like "UnattendedMode=DefaultHide", which shows only those pages that the user is meant to change, such as the user and machine name.

T refers to the time remaining on the Windows XP install. Windows XP shows the 'time remaining' on the setup screen. T39 is the first reboot after character mode (when the registry is first created), while T12 refers to a moment in the install when a black screen flashes on the setup. This is cmd.exe attempting to run cmdlines.txt. T39 occurs at the end of the character-mode setup. At this time, you should have a directory $WIN_NT$.~BT on the c: drive, and $WIN~NT$.~LS on the drive that Windows is to be installed on. At this time, Windows builds the first registry, from HIVE*.INF. The HIVEFIX.INF hack affects this registry. T12 occurs when the system has built the Windows directory, and the default and all users tree. It is running in a user that will eventually become default, so all sorts of Default-User fixes are meant to be applied here. Note that some of these fixes just don't hold, and there are always alternate ways of modifying the default user after setup.

The usual places to edit are Initial load: winnt.sif, unattended.txt T39: hivefix.inf T12: cmdlines.txt Post install If you need to hide things like creating shortcuts to my pictures &c, you may need a T39 fix. Alternately, setting the MY PICTURES folder to the same as My Documents in hivefix.inf, might well do the same thing.

It used to be that .BAT files were passed to command.com to process from the start, while .CMD files are processed from CMD.EXE directly (without loading the NTVDM environment first), In any case, if you use 4NT to run the files, this distinction is irrelevant (since 4nt processes bat files directly), but you can't use EXTPROC or rexx scripting in BAT files, but you can use these in CMD files.

T12 "cmdlines.txt" is a bit late to be setting this sort of information. Search this forum for "HIVEFIX.INF" for the correct way of doing this, eg http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t84600.html Editing this stuff will affect the GUI logon, so you can do things like customise the install location, add files to the base install, &c.

WINNT.SIF is not the place to do this. Instead, use winnt32.exe and an unattended insatll, eg from bartpe. The drive where %systemroot% is placed is set bt the /TEMPDRIVE switch. Alternately, you can set the drive at the character-mode install stage. W

In practice, you can not move the user profile directories off the user partition. Even if you set the user profiles on a different drive at install, (by editing WINNT.SIF), the system will create a cache of these on the system drive (ie where windows is installed). You could do tricks like you have done (eg junction or mklink). I have never tried this. You can reduce the general stress on the window partition by moving the Local Settings, Temp etc to a different partition. This does wonders, actually. In this case, you just set that location to an alternate drive. I suppose i never tried to move documents, but rather edited the default 'locations' dialog, and used it to redirect saves.

You may want to ditch the line [unattended] OemSkipEula for the more undocumented line [data] EulaCompleted="1" This prevents the EULA from appearing, but will make it appear as such. OemSkipEula does not pass on that the EULA has been signed. W

The problem seems to be related to the environment variable PATHEXT not being set. It should look like PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH Try this: SETX -m PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH exit that command prompt, and restart another one. See if the problem still happens. W

I add various things by way of hivefix.inf + dosnet.inf + txtsetup.inf 1. directx.cpl (for XPpro, XPhome, Win2k) 2. tweakui.exe (for XPpro, XPhome), tweakui.cpl (for Win2k) 3. (Win2K) diskpart.exe, kill.exe, runext.dll, setx.exe, tlist.exe + heavily patched webvw.dll 4. (WinXPHome) tasklist.exe, taskkill.exe 5. webvw.dll is the distribution version, + all of the JPG in the base WinME install, not already in Win2k. hivefix sets locality to local time zone, etc, but generally does not add too much radically. Additional wallpapers from Winnt 4.0 are added by superimposition of files, ie xcopy /s cdrom\windir\*.* systemroot.

The example i gave is for all different OS versions at once. If you want a subset, then simply remove the unused bits. One should note that without third party help, one can only have one version of DOS to ms-dos 3.x to 6.x or pc-dos 3.x to 7.x, and only one version of MS-DOS 7.x - 8.x or Windows 9x. So if you want to have two versions of Windows 9x, you need a third-party boot-manager OR separate machines. You can run different Win9x versions, if you do the "replace-DOS" trick, and multi-boot Windows through a DOS menu. This is only partially successful, but you can have Win3.1/Win95/Win98, running on the Win98 DOS version.

You can readily do NT4/2000/XP/2003/vista on a single box (done this). You can add something like PC-DOS 6.3 and Windows 98SE or ME to the kit as well. Here goes. The boot disk should be less than 137 GB = 128 GiB, because of bios problems not fixed until XP2. You should create partitions as follows. You should use different sizes, because this may be all you have to see in fdisk. c:\ fat16 496 MB dos 6.22 + win3.1 = bootmgr 7 MB OS/2 boot manager d:\ fat16 496 MB data (work around a DOS bug) e:\ fat32 1 GB win98SE works here f:\ hpfs 2 GB OS/2 here. f:\ ntfs 1 GB WinNT 4 (service pack 6a + fixes) g:\ ntfs 4.1 GB Win2K h:\ ntfs 4.2 GB WinXP i:\ ntfs 8 GB Win2K3 j:\ ntfs 16 GB Vista. [] ntfs 20 GB install partition (ie dir for copying software installs) r:\ ram disk 8 MB s:\ cdrom 1 t:\ cdrom 2 If you get hold of bootpart.exe from http://www.winimage.com/ you can pretty much install in any order. You also need something like the 2k3 versions of ntldr + ntdetect.com on the c-drive, along with a batch to copy the stuff to the root directory. NT4 must be primed. Look at www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t82169.html for the guide here. It needs to be in the first 8 GB. I normally give it 1 GB. W2K/XP will generally install as desired. It can go anywhere. I normally give it 4 GB, eg 4.10 GB for W2K and 4.20 GB for XP. W2K3 will generally go anwhere. I normally give it 8 GB Vista normally gets 16 GB, anywhere. DOS 6.x should see the c:\ drive, and prehaps the d:\ drive. NT4/2K/XP/2K3 all use ntldr + ntdetect.com as loaders, although an earlier version will not load a later windows. You can load DOS 6.x and Windows 9x into this start menu with bootpart.exe Vista uses a new boot-loader, "bootmgr". It regards NT4/2K/XP/2K3 as legacy systems, while DOS, OS/2, Win98 are not. You can do certain hacks to bring XP, 2K3 to the front page, but not nt4/2k. OS/2 requires its own boot manager in a separate primary partition (6 MB is plenty). You set this to zero-time out, and get bootpart to create a bootsector that boots that partition. You can boot bartpe this way too. The ramdrives can be set using (for dos), XMSDSK, for OS/2, place the driver first after a RESERVELETTERS=Q in config.sys, and for other systems, use ARAMDISK, which allows you to set the drive. The cdroms can be configured by DOS by the MSCDEX /L:S in autoexec.bat, in OS/2, as for ramdisks, and for Windows systems, in the ramdrive. If you set W2k up properly, and then install the rest from there, you need only configure the system once, because a file migrate.inf ought be set up in the directory c:\$win_nt$.~BT. Use a batch file like, to set the windows drive icon to a win-flag + drive icon (most versions of Windows) - it does not work in NT4. It makes it clear what drive your disk is on. for /F "usebackqdelims=: " %%f in ('%systemdrive%') do set sysdrv=%%f set hkey=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer set hkey=%hkey%\DriveIcons\%Sysdrv%\DefaultIcon echo %hkey% reg add "%hkey%" /f /ve /t reg_expand_sz /d "%%Systemroot%%\system32\shell32.dll,39" set sysdrv= An alternate is to create another small partition, and under it, create directories like 1381, 2195, 2600, 3790, and 6000, and then proceed to remount un-used windows partitions in these folders, eg p:\1381 is where f:\ is mounted. Wendy

You could also use something like bootpart.exe to create a boot-sector file, then fab the required DOS (ie add IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, command.com, config.sys, and autoexec.bat. This will create a win9x boot disk on c:, and then you just use that as the floppy. Another alternative is to look for a proggie hight VFLOPPY (at v 1.5). This is in chinese, but not too hard to figure out. It allows you to add bootable images (eg floppy diskettes) to the NT boot.ini. W

I do not know this. Putting a fix in the INF files is not the same as the SETUPREG.HIV. However, not everyone is starting off with USP5 sources. Because some USP5 (and a few other fixes) may have this fix in place, i reccomended the /F flag on the reg command (which overwrites an existing value). W

You could convert these to REG files, for example, by loading these into the registry, and then exporting the outcome as a REG file. Then unload these. If you want to script this, use something like REG.EXE, available on your Win2k or winxp support tools on the cdrom.

When DOS boots, it allocates a drive letter to each partition. When the Win32 system loads, it extends this to cover the optical drives. It's not hidden anywhere. If you had 18 partitions, you would end up with drives to the letter T. If you mean to set lastdrive, you should do this in config.sys.

You really do need to use 'controlset001' here, rather than 'currentcontrolset', because the hive refers to a win32 environment that is not loaded. You can easily load the file in registry, and poke around it. Windows, when normally running, has controlset001 and controlset002, and curretncontrolset simply points to whichever of these is active. However what we have is an environment where currentcontrolset is not set, and because this is the initial load, we are pointing to the only saved set (001). If you were doing this on a real win2000 hive (of a running set), you may have to set both 001 and 002, because the next load might load 002 rather than 001. The same thing exists, for example, in BartPE. When i wrote the batch, i had the hive set in registry, and looked at the results thereon. I still would suggest using the /f switch, because the initial source may indeed have this setting in place, and ye will be asked to reset it to something else. Wendy

You can use this in your project. You may want to add a /f switch to the reg add line, to overwrite an existing value. Otherwise, the batch will pause asking for permission to overwrite the file. You may want to look at this file in regedit, too. I have not looked at it completely, but there might be things like default locality etc, which the user may want to customise over the default East coast settings. I also have a "hivefix.inf" project for Win2k/XP, which does nice things like integrate directx.cpl and tweakui.exe into the control panel categories. 1 HIVEFIX: http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t84600.html 2 2KTWEAK http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t86214.html The 2ktweak adds files to the web\wallpaper folder, i use the winme files here (as most of the me files are already the same as the 2k files). Hivefix works under both 2k and xp, except a number of tweaks are later overwritten. These are grouped together as such.

This is a batch file to modify setupreg.hiv. You do this, so that the initial boot will see the extended disks (ie past 137G = 128Gi. You need to have reg.exe in your path (eg it is in the Win2k support tools on your cdrom). Change the first line of the batch to the path where your files live. setlocal set winsource=q:\wnt50sp4\i386 attrib -r -a -s -h %winsource%\setupreg.hiv reg load HKLM\Setup %winsource%\setupreg.hiv set regkey=ControlSet001\Services\atapi\Parameters reg add HKLM\Setup\%regkey% /v EnableBigLba /t reg_dword /d 00000001 /f reg unload HKLM\Setup set winsource= set regkey= endlocal