MindMaster

Each directory has a set of applications and only some users have access to those applications. We configure the ACLS on the directory and then only load the config files that the user has access to. If I place everything in one config file, users will try to install applications they can't access. Mark

Hi All, I have WPI multiple config files placed into directories where each directory is a group of applications. How do I load multiple config files on the command line - is there a specific config file separation character? Alternatively, is there another way to to specify multiple config files? Thanks, Mark

Perfect... Thanks! How can I specify mulitple config files on the command line? If not on the command line, is there another way to identify multiple config files? Thanks, Mark

Hi, If I create a new config file and then rerun WPI.hta it automatically reloads the new config file. However, if I load an existing config file, modify it, and then save it, re-running WPI does not autoload the config file I loaded. Where is it storing what config file to load when it runs. If I rename the new config file using windows and re-run WPI.hta, it (not surprisingly) doesn't find the config file. None of the files in the WPIScripts directory appear to get updated with a reference to the config file. Similarly, I am looking to have multiple config files (each one contains a specific set of applications). If I do this, where is the location I should place the list of config files? Ideally, it would be somewhere that would not be overwritten when I update to a new version. Thanks in advance! Mark

You can do this using sysocmgr.exe which should be in your path. For example, you can install IIS as follows: 1. Create a file listing the components. (I call mine file WindowsComponents.txt) [Components] Fp_extensions=Off fp_vdir_deploy=Off Iis_common=On iis_www=On iis_asp=On iis_inetmgr=On iis_www_vdir_scripts=On 2. Run the following command: sysocmgr /i:%windir%/inf/sysoc.inf /u:WindowsComponents.txt I hope this helps. Mark Michealis http://mark.michaelis.net

It is probably something silly that I am doing but I too am having problems with the download. I have attached my log. I did this with a clean download from 1:30 AM PST. The screen text is as follows: -- 1:36:31 --> Looking for CD Source. -- 1:36:31 --> Found local Boot Image. -- 1:36:31 --> Setting up Run-Time Variables. -- 1:36:31 --> Listing Hotfixes and Updates. -- 1:36:31 --> Removing Previous Creation Directories. -- 1:36:31 --> Removing TEMP Files. -- 1:36:31 --> Creating TEMP directories. -- 1:36:31 --> Determine Source Version. -- 1:36:32 --> Found Source Version: 3KS -- 1:36:32 --> Found Minor Version: 2 -- 1:36:32 --> Found Service Pack Version: 0 -- 1:36:32 --> Found Language Version: ENU -- 1:36:32 --> Found Localization Version: English -- 1:36:32 --> Hotfix Directory used: RTMQFE -- 1:36:32 --> Downloading Hotfix List. -- 1:36:32 --> http://xpcreate.wiretapped.us/XPCLISTS/3KS/ENU/XPCTHLST.TXT Error: "Download Error on Hotfix List." Press Enter to Exit. Later XPCREATE.zip

Hi, Is there some setting in Unattend.txt to not install Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration on Windows 2003? Alternatively, is there an unattended command that I can execute to remove this option? Secondly, can anyone help with where to put a list of trusted sites within Unattend.txt or again, some equivalent command-line to do this? Thanks in advance! MindMaster

Is there any way to specify a different location for WMPub just as ProfileDir specifies a different location for "Documents and Settings" or wwwroot specifies a different location for InetPub? Thanks!

Comments about 19 Sep 2004.... whatever was there 2 hours ago. Concerns: 1. I don't have XPSource set in XPCreate.ini. It attempts to copy from "E:i386\..." In other words, there is a slash missing. 2. I have CopySource=NO but it still seems to require the Windows CD. I was expecting that if I previously did a run that populated CDROOT I would not need to do it again. This is a bummer because it means I must switch CDs in the middle, something I always seem to forget. 3. In my trial runs it still uses my destination CD (the one I previously wrote to) as the source CD. 4. My CDBurn command (from the xpcreate.log file) was CDBURN.EXE YES XPCREATE.ISO -SPEED 24 The "YES" should be CD R/W drive. Working: 1. All messages are prefixed with a time stamp at in my trials. Next version feature suggestion: - The ability to specify the WINNT.SIF file to use within my XPCreate.ini file. Obviously the file would be renamed to WINNT.SIF on copy.

Minor update It appears that the drive letter assignment is not consistent. Sometimes the RAID set is letter E and sometimes (once in total) it is C. When the SATA Raid set is E I end up with drive letters C, E, F (the DVD/RW). I have no idea what changes between installations that would cause Windows to assign drive letters differently. I need some way to make sure that the SATA Raid set is assigned D so that ProfileDir and wwwroot/ftproot settings withing WINNT.SIF can refer to the D drive. Hmmmm....

I have made one small step forward in resolving this. The problem I am having now is that the drive letter is E: instead of D:. As a result I am having the same issues as before but at least the drivers are being loaded. If I don't install the drivers using F6 (or slipstreaming) them and then install the drivers after I log in the drive letter is D. I have to install them using F6 (or slipstreaming them), however, in order to place the ProfilesDir and InetPub on D:. The problem is that when I do this the drive letter ends up being E. The D: drive letter is skipped entirely. How can I change it so the drive letter is D rather than E? Thanks in advance!

More minor suggestions/features: 1. Instead of stating that the ISO has finished building, how about including the ISO name so if it was changed in the XPCREATE.INI file one can see the name that was used. Actually, I would recommend using the INI data for other messages too but this was the one that I specifically would have liked. 2. It would appear to me that XPCREATE is a great way of avoiding having a 2000 parameter command line. However, the one parameter that you might want to consider would be the name of the XPCREATE.INI file. That way one could easily save multiple INI files depending on what CD they were creating. I did this simply in an XPCREATE.CMD batch file wrapper that renamed the file specified as a parameter to be XPCREATE.INI. (Sorry, no more meaningful comments because the machine with the software on is not installing successfully at the moment. As soon as it does, including a network connection, I will try with a more recent drop.)

I am getting an AE when I launch XPlode.exe I am running Windows 2003 Standard on an AMD Opteron based box. When I launch it using cmdlines.txt nothing happens. Therefore, I tried it after logging in and I observed the exception. I tried to have it create a log file but nothing appeared. Thanks for any help!

Okay, I think I have made some progress and the issue appears to be with DOSATA. DOSATA=NO If I don't use DOSATA and instead click F6 at the appropriate time I am presented with 2 drives for installing Windows onto. The C drive is my IDE drive and the D drive is my SATA RAID (comprised of two drives.) After selecting C everything proceeds as expected and the installation succeeds. DOSATA=YES If I select DOSATA I am presented with 3 drives for installing windows onto. The first drive, (C:) is my IDE drive and the second two are the individual drives in my SATA RAID. (Not good!) If I proceed with the install I get the errors creating D&S and Inetpub. When I eventually log on the profile is not found. What is interesting, however, is that I end up with only 2 drives visible. The first is C, my IDE drive, and the second is my SATA RAID drive but it is tagged as E (not D as it should be). Conclusion I believe there is something in your modifications of TXTSETUP.OEM (or some other part of your DOSATA magic) that causes the SATA drives not be be seen as a RAID set. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! Me P.S. Yes, I use the same drivers for both DOSATA=YES and DOSATA=NO.

1a. This relates to not showing the command executed in the log file so that it can be debugged. At least knowing what was attempted that errored out is important as I indicated before. 1b. I recreated the CDBurn issue this time with a valid CDRW drive specified. I think this needs to be fixed. The log was the same: I tried manually using the CDBurn command from an old version log file and it executed perfectly. 2. I have attached a ScreenDump.txt showing that some lines don't have timestamps. The attached XPCreate.log file is what I used to create that particular screen dump but no logfiles.cab from this run because it errored out with the CDBurn error above. 3a. I will check in the next version. 3b. Can't you write the log files to the correct place regardless of an error. In fact, why not create Logfiles.cab regardless. (I guess you need exception handling.) I have attached a zip that includes Logfiles.cab from a run I did that did not require the CD to be written just so you can take a look if you want to. Later, Me Logs.zip

Here's my report: 1. The initial attempt to erase and/or burn the CD failed. What was most disconcerting about this was the fact that I couldn't see the command that was executed in the log file. As a result I had to make up the CDBurn command which has too many parameters for my small brain. Previously the command appeared. 2. Adding new CAB file if needed. Still (the previous version did this too) displays a "File not found" error. I believe it is innocuous ... any chance it can be eliminated? 3. Adding SATA/RAID support Shows an error "File not found - *.OEM 3. All XPC* files created during an execution (XPCTKILL, XPCTXCOP, and XPCTPATH to name a few) remain in the XPCreate directory which is less than preferred. Any chance they can go in a working, log, or temp folder? At this point I have not actually installed the image so my comments only pertain to creating the image. Later, Me P.S. The cause of the CDBurn failure was my lack of specifying the destination drive and the fact that it attempted to burn to a Daemon Tools virtual drive. The error in the log was completely unhelpful:

Not at all. I am not copying anything to "Documents and Settings." Sorry to have been confusing. In WINNT.SIF I have [GuiUnattended] with "ProfileDir=D:\UserData" and[internetServer] with PathFTPRoot and PathWWWRoot set to a directory under D:\InetPub. I am not copying any files manually anywhere. I simply want the D&S and Inetpub directories to be located on my SATA RAID drives and not on C. Unfortunately, although the SATA drives are working during text mode and after login they do not appear to be working properly during GUI Mode. Perhaps something else is wrong, not sure, but the data is not getting copied and the installation of IIS is not working. Thanks!

Hi All, I am trying to put "Documents and Settings" onto my SATA (D:) drive along with Inetpub. I have successfully been able to slipstream the SATA drivers into my Windows 2003 CD such that a. During text mode they are detected- I know this because I can select the SATA drive as the Windows installation drive. b. Upon first login I can see the SATA drive. The problem is that during GUI Setup mode the disk appears to be unavailable. a. I get an error well before T-12 that effectively Inetpub cannot be written to and b. When I first logon my C drive has Microsoft, Administrative tools, and similar directories at the root (presumably unable to place them appropriately on the D drive.) and my profile cannot be found. Rebooting the profile is found but there is nothing in program files and essentially any files related to my Documents and Settings are not installed. Any ideas on how to get around this would be most appreciated. I already checked that the OemPnPDriversPath drivers path is set correctly in WINNT.SIF. Thanks in advance! Me

Yes, I have IDE as well for my Windows and Program Files directories. All data (InetPub and "Documents and Settings") is destined for the SATA RAID drive. Certainly and it works. Problem is I end up with data (stuff other than programs) that needs redundancy on my non-RAID disk. All the Documents and Settings directories still get spread to strange places. They are the Si3114r drivers. I have tried a recent version downloaded from SiliconImages web site as well as the version on floppies that came with the hardware. In addition my WINNT.SIF file is set to IGNORE for whether the drivers are signed or not. (I guess the answer is that frankly I don't know how to tell but I think I have taken the necessary steps that it doesn't matter.) Nope, just one big primary partition. Are you referring to the underwater hockey or polo championships? Thanks! Me

Excellent... Even better than what I was proposing!

0. This seems like the correct approach to me... this was my approach in my batch file wrapper. 1. Excellent! 2. No problem.... where it really became a problem for me was when I was prompted to overwrite. Since you dealing with this the /Q is perhaps insignificant as you suspect. 3. Hey, if someone has the CDERASE setting set to true they can't very well request that you don't erase the CD now can they. No way I am posting modified code.... to change this script and then upgrade to a newer version in the future is way beyond my tolerance level. I went to great lengths to add my own customizations via other ways than script modifications. In the end I thought I needed to actually modify it but eventually I realized that I had misunderstood how it worked and should, therefore, adjust my expectations. One more consideration (not as minor): Allow for additional files (read Mass Storage Device Drivers) to be placed into the FILESCD\i386 directory and copied into the i386 directory on CD. This would allow one to slipstream files that you have not handled explicitly. If a TXTSETUP.SIF file is there you could use it as the master file to which you place your RAID/DRIVER magic. Just as you do already with the WINNT.SIF file. Just a thought for the future. Later, Me P.S. Writing this amount of batch script code is truly amazing. This seems like an ideal task for MSBuild (once it was part of the OS) and your script is significantly more complex than most build scripts I ever created.

Hi All, I have successfully been able to slipstream the SATA drivers into my Windows 2003 CD such that during text mode they are detected and upon first login I can see the SATA drive. The problem is that during GUI Setup mode the disk appears to be unavailable. I suspect this this because I have configured the SATA disk to be where InetPub is located but I get the following error: This is the same error I got when I was not loading the SATA drivers correctly and the disk was not available which is why I suspect the disk is still not available but only in GUI Setup mode. Any ideas on how to get around this would be most appreciated. I already checked that the OemPnPDriversPath drivers path is set correctly in WINNT.SIF. Thanks in advance! Me P.S. Don't Try This At Home: I thought I was not a moron (obviously I was wrong) and I changed my drivers directory and updated the corresponding DRIVERDIR entry in XPCREATE.INI. When I eventually got round to checking the obvious OEMPnPDriversPath I discovered mine was: OemPnPDriversPath ="~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2;~0,-2"

Hi, I wasn't copying it anywhere intentionally. For some reason that I have not yet determined, CDSOURCE was the target and there were still files there. One time this happened because I was browsing in the directory while XPCREATE.CMD was executing but this only happened once. At the moment I am running XPCREATE repeatedly as fast as my computer will test it in an attempt to get the SATA drivers working without success. During these iterations omitting the XPSOURCE entry seemed to cause the problem (along with varying to both YES and NO for COPYSOURCE perhaps?). I will continue to investigate and pass on any information I can ascertain but recently I wrapped XPCREATE.CMD in my own BAT file and simply deleted the CDSOURCE directory before running XPCREATE.BAT so I don't see this problem any more. While we are on the topic of minor points (let me say again this is a great utility) consider: 1. If the BOOT directory has not been created and there is no entry BOOTIMGFILE then the script appears to attempt to move it to the BOOT directory without first creating it thus causing a failure. 2. Displaying all the files that are copied significantly slows down a copy operation for xcopy. I would like to recommend the /Q option be used for large xcopy commands. 3. Lastly, if I have my destination RW CD in the drive D (and/or I don't specify a destination) and the destination was a previous failed XPCREATE run, then the copy operation occurs from the destination disk rather than the source disk. One way around this to consider would be to perform the CDRW erase before the source copy. Obvously explicitly specifying the source location is another way around it but many folks may not realize that the destination CD is being used as the source and that could be confusing. (Does this make sense at all?) Thanks for all your hard work!

Hi, I noticed in the :CHECKSRC section of XPCREATE.CMD that there is an XCOPY command without the /Y and as a result, a prompt appears asking to confirm the copy. I would like to suggest that the command be updated to suppress confirmation. Thanks, Mark P.S. Great Job!