cluberti

They're probably being placed in the local machine Administrator account's start menu folder, and not the All Users profile start menu folder. You'll have to either fix your installers to install for all users when installing the applications, or, script moving the shortcuts to the All Users start menu folder location.

As to getting images installed automagically once they've booted up, you'll need to prestage the client machine accounts in RIS, and specify an image for each computer account.

First, for the driver path entry, your OEMPreinstall value needs to equal YES, or those files will be ignored. As to the error, I'd say that the version you integrated doesn't play well with RIS (not uncommon with Realtek and Broadcom drivers) - remove the version (and any .pnf files it generated) from the \i386 directory, and see if you can download a version that works properly (you may want to do a google search for your NIC and RIS to see if there are posted "good" version numbers). Don't forget to stop and restart binlsvc when you're done.

I'm not sure why they'd be different, unless one version is RTM and the other is GDR (perhaps zipping and posting them here will help). However, a solution that is probably best in your case is to install a clean W2K machine and install SP4 and then all hotfixes up to 917736 directly from the Microsoft site, then checksum the file on disk to see what version you have compared to the other two - the one that matches is the correct one, and script that hotfix, or that particular file to machines with the hotfix already installed, to all of the W2K machines on your network pronto . It'd take a bit more time, but you could be sure of what hotfix levels and file versions you have out there (sounds like the environment isn't very standard).

It was something you could cheat on in beta versions, but the registry hacks do not work in RTM - you either have a video card capable of doing aero (or you're using VMWare workstation 6.0), or you don't get Aero and Vista Glass in RTM.

At this point, it's possible it's hardware (although I am not convinced, because it does work sometimes from some locations) - I'd say the only surefire way to figure this out is to reinstall the OS, install the latest drivers for your hardware, and install ONLY quicktime. At this point I'd be very interested to see what happens from the local disk, and the same file copied to an external disk as well.

Well, I can't say for sure why it was removed, but I do believe that because there is no such thing as a Windows installation anymore (everything comes from an image, even if it's just the base image now), that the only way currently to do it is to add them the above way. However, you could still populate the DevicePath value found in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion that the OEMPnPDriversPath value modified, but I've not tried it to see what would happen if that was modified in an image and then ximage'd back up and redeployed. I think it might work though, if you create all of the values you need in DevicePath and then dropped the drivers in as necessary to your images.

Netcfgx.dll is the network configuration dll, responsible for what it sounds like it's responsible for . The version you have that is giving problems (.7003) I believe comes from hotfix MS06-031, or KB917736 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917736). The version you have that is working properly I believe was included in SP3 for W2K, and includes quite a few vulnerabilities (including the RPC vulnerability from 917736) - I'd say contact the vendor to find out what is causing the issue, because it's probably not that file specifically (if it was, all of the machines with .7003 would exhibit the problem).

It's only a 16bit setup program, and the 2K installer is basically the same one from NT4. Heck, it wasn't even changed until XP SP2, because it's not a trivial modification on some hardware configurations (read: datacenter editions).

Well, wallpapers from network share locations work, and wallpapers from a default profile work, but it's best to place the wallpaper file somewhere other than the profile. First, make sure it's a bitmap (bmp) - other file types are supposed to work, but trust me, they're unreliable at best. Second, place the wallpaper file somewhere else on the machine where users will have read access, like the root of the Windows directory. That should solve your problems with the wallpaper. I'd doubt that the prohibition or problem is coming from group policy, but if it is, everything related to desktop wallpaper is under User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Desktop and it's subfolders.

If the hardware is identical, then it should work. If the hardware is quite different, it'll either not boot or it'll boot and require reactivation. Best to install on different hardware, do not activate, and move it over to see what happens.

I've seen posts around that say that after vLite'ing Vista, it runs pretty decent on 256MB of RAM - so I suppose that it's possible to run it properly on less than 512MB of RAM without all of the visual bells and whistles and without some of the features turned on and running. But, if you run stock Vista without changing anything on a default install, most people find that even 1GB isn't enough - 2GB or more for Vista, or stick with XP .

The most reliable way to do this would be to have your images started from WinPE (or BartPE), partition and format the disk, and run a WMI script to determine the hardware. Once the hardware was determined, you could then have the script connect to the network share and copy down the appropriate drivers to disk, then launch Windows installation with the appropriate OemPnpDrivers path set in the .sif file, pointing to this copied directory already on disk. If you're absolutely sure machines would be a particular hardware type, you could follow this thread to restore drivers after the image, but again, you'd likely need to do something pre-image to determine the hardware type of the machine.

Currently, there is not a way around it. You could try and image an existing, non-activated version of Vista on other hardware and then image it to this machine with less than 512MB of RAM, but that is the only possible way with anything better than Beta2.

Assuming that you have configured a profile on a local machine, copied it, set permissions to "EVERYONE" on the copied profile folder (from a domain workstation or member server, NOT a DC), renamed the folder to "Default User", then copied that folder up to the \\domain.tld\Netlogon share, it should work. You may want to try and configure userenv logging to see if that log shows you why it isn't working (it should definitely work): Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon Value: UserEnvDebugLevel Type: REG_DWORD Radix: Hexadecimal Data: 10002 (Reboot required)

Not a problem - to make sure, go into the Control Panel on each, into the "Network" or "Network Connections" applet, and then go into the properties of the Local Network Interface adapter that corresponds to the NIC you are using (if your servers only have one NIC, it should be the only one listed). You can then go into the properties of the TCP/IP stack from there and check/configure DNS settings.

Well, that would be the first reason not to upgrade from my list - I figured it was something like that, but I have to check. If it just does a registry check, you can modify the following registry values and see what happens (I'd change it back after install though - wouldn't want to actually break anything): Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion Value: CSDVersion Type: REG_SZ Value: Service Pack 2 Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion Value: BuildLab Type: REG_SZ Value: 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 (you could pick any SP2 build number and put it here, I just picked a random one from one of my SP2 machines) I believe it should work without a reboot, but as always, having a backup before monkeying with the registry is a very good idea (especially here!!!)

You could bypass the RAM check in Beta versions of Vista via the answer file or a setup.exe switch, but that no longer works on RC versions and RTM. You either add more RAM, or you don't install Vista. You can run Vista with less than 512MB of RAM (removing RAM after install is quite fine if you choose to do so, and Vista will run), but you can't install Vista with less than 512MB of RAM. I wouldn't recommend less than 2GB on a Vista install, but to each his or her own.

Download the latest psexec from sysinternals, and run "psexec.exe -s cmd" from an open command prompt window to change to a SYSTEM command prompt (you should see the title of the cmd prompt window change). You can then run regedit in that command prompt, and it will run regedit as the SYSTEM account, which should get you what you need.

Make sure both are only configured to use the SBS server's DNS information (and that the DNS server is working properly). The only other option will be to get a network trace of the failure occurring (with Wireshark or Netmon) from the W2K server to see what is actually happening, and where it's trying to go that cannot be found.

If it fails during safe mode, than it's not a driver or startup application causing the issue - it's windows itself. Have you run sfc /scannow to see if it recurs after that reboot, or done a repair install?

You need to make sure that the Win2K and SBS2K3 box both have only the internal DNS server IP of the SBS2K3 server in their IP config. If you place any public DNS server names in either location, adding to the domain will likely fail.

I can't speak for other OSes, but in Windows most are fount in shell32.dll, although some are in other resource files (like explorer.exe).

HFSlip may actually help you here, as TAiN has advised. However, if you don't want to modify your 2K install media, you can use something like WinPE or BartPE to boot and modify disks and partitions, and even kick off the Windows installation.

Not only that, but most (if not all) updates for XP now require SP2, making non-SP2 machines more vulnerable as time goes on. Is there a reason you can't install SP2? An application that just will not run on SP2, perhaps, or perhaps you have a blacklisted key? Otherwise, I can't think of a reason not to install SP2 on an XP machine...