cluberti

That's the "ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION" win32 error. Assuming you had lots of errors on the previous install, and you're getting odd errors here, you probably have one of the following issues: you have a virus or malware causing it (probably not likely if it's a brand new install not attached to the internet yet), you have bad install media causing the problems during install that manifest when you go to use the OS, or you have bad hardware (likely RAM). If all you are doing is strictly installing windows (no other software or drivers) and then you get errors installing applications, it is bound to be one of these issues.

Pinned.

There's the Windows 7 Administrator's Pocket Consultant and the Windows 7 Resource Kit books that I've found to both have a good unattend/deploy section, with the ResKit going FAR deeper into deployment than the Pocket Consultant (but it may be overkill for you - the Pocket Consultant might be all you need for a basic deployment). If you can, I'd recommend having both because you never know what you're going to want to look up next, and they're both fairly in-depth for the audience they target. If you want to use MDT along with WDS I've also documented it on my blog a bit.

I've PM'ed the password to the affidavit account to the affidavit1 account. Please change it once you are logged on so that no one (including myself) knows the new password but you. Thank you.

Any Intel chip that exposes HyperThreading theoretically should only have the registers used as a virtual processor if the OS running on it supports SMP, and since Win9x won't see that second logical CPU, it shouldn't be addressing it.

Please try your account now, I believe I may have fixed it.

Moving to appropriate unattended section.

You should be able to use DISM to remove drivers from an offline image.

That depends on the driver - there was a change in Vista that would allow non-admins to install printers, but only certain print drivers listed as trusted (either ones that shipped on the Windows CD or have a digital signature in their installation package). If the driver did not ship with Windows (and considering they need to install it, I'm guessing no on this one) and isn't a signed driver package (again, going by the elevation prompt I'm going to guess no on this too), then they'll get an elevation prompt. Technet has an article about this that you should probably review going forward.

It's possible that the GPO that applied the software package is no longer applying to the client, at which point software uninstall would occur because it would have gone out of scope. Take a look at gpresult /Z and make sure the software installation policy is applying properly first.

Note there are two major differences- the actual local Administrator account gets a full admin token on logon, whereas an Administrative group account gets a pseudo-token and is still affected by UAC and it's security (unless you of course disable UAC). Also, the admin account has a well-known SID GUID, and it's disabled (and a new user is made an administrator on install) to try and mitigate attacks that target the Administrator account, both by name AND by it's SID.

There's a possibility that the original source was actually on MSDN, hence the investigation. However, initial review does show the source and the GPL'ed code being similar, but the origins of the GPL'ed code are in question, hence it appears the tool was pulled pending said investigation. I don't know what will come of it other than Microsoft will probably stop outsourcing tool development for awhile.

Hmmm... First post, posting listings including titles (so it gets picked up by the search engines), and buying Mac and PC versions of Adobe software? Sorry, doesn't pass the spam sniff test. [Closed].

If setup starts but fails, you can press SHIFT+F10 to get a command prompt and get the setup log files copied off to a usb key, as I mentioned here.

Look at the task sequence in MDT for your install - there's a section in the task sequence called "Preinstall", and under the "New Computer only" you'll have the "Format and partition hard disk" step. You can edit it here in the GUI if you'd like.

This is why we used to always document EVERY step done during a repair or reload, no matter how mundane, and get the user to review it and sign off on it. They rarely understood what it was, but we would explain that it was like getting auto repairs or regular maintenance done - it was always better to document everything that was done (I don't mean the "clicked here, did that" sort of thing but the "changed password" or "reset account" sort of steps) and have it reviewed by someone else when completed (in house) and then have the customer sign-off when payment was tendered and the machine returned. That way when they come back in a week, I have a signed copy of the bill of work that says what was and WASN'T done - if a password reset or set wasn't in the list, and there's a password, I'm not only off the hook but I've got some questions they need to answer. As to proof, if you have security auditing enabled (and I believe things like that are enabled by default since XPSP2) you should be able to go into the security event log and get some indication of WHEN it was done. You probably won't get the why as verbose audit logging is definitely not on by default, but assuming someone changed it post reload it should be logged as previous posters have mentioned.

That's correct - there's a branch of the IE code tree for each supported platform and supported service pack, as well as a GDR (general distribution release) and LDR (QFE for IE6 - limited distribution release/quick fix engineering, aka the "hotfix branch") subbranch for each as well. IE has worked like this for many versions, so unfortunately you can't pick out a specific version based on help > about.

To determine the build of IE8, you must look at an associated binary (wininet.dll is a good one to check) rather than iexplore.exe (where help>about gets the version number), since cumulative updates do not update iexplore.exe. I can't easily answer the first other than the $AVG folder - the answer to that is yes, and as such you should exclude your mount directory from AVG scanning, etc to try to avoid that. The rest I would need to know if you ran the SP1 and SP2 cleanup utilities after installing each service pack, etc - but I have heard of folders that you just cannot delete from a mount point, and it could be that this folder will be required after the sysprep boot. Hard to say, if you could provide a bit more info that would help.

People forget Microsoft is not in the business of making an embedded OS for the mass market, they make a monolithic system (kernel and shell) and they try to get it as slim as is readily possible, but they're NEVER going to try and go hardcore and make Win7 (or Win8, or any full version of Windows) as fast as Windows Embedded or like the old 9x or NT lines. Features, security measures, and yes, eye candy are all more resource-intensive than if they weren't installed (even if those resources are mostly just disk space). If you have a problem fitting Win7 onto it's intended hard disk, then either you need a larger partition in your multiboot scheme or your machine isn't going to run Win7 well and you probably should stick to Win2K or WinXP, which were from the beginning of the decade and will run well on hardware specs from around that time. Microsoft has never been about making Windows slim and trim, they're about adding features and security, and using the hardware of the day as the benchmark (and since this is based on Vista, they're looking to run well on circa 2007 hardware, not 2001). People can whine and complain all they want about it, but the fact is that most consumers do NOT upgrade their operating systems, they get them with a new PC, and businesses generally keep their hardware within a 3 - 4 year envelope meaning that any business that upgraded their hardware in the last two years (or will be in the next two years) should be able to consider Windows 7 without thinking much, if at all, about the hardware it runs on. Considering that Microsoft continues to make great money with this philosophy, I don't see it changing much, if at all.

It's actually failing when downloading Windows updates, and unfortunately when you do a passive install with a non-IEAK build of IE8 if this fails the whole setup fails. The error is actually 0x800703f0 (0x000003f0), which maps to: for hex 0x3f0 / decimal 1008 ERROR_NO_TOKEN winerror.h An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist.This means it cannot get a user token for the user's login context, which means you aren't doing this during the auditUser pass, but the specialize pass. Given the way IE's setup engine is written, a user MUST be logged on (and the user's token available) or setup will fail - this is generally not available during the specialize pass if a setup package needs to check with WU, and thus this failure is expected. To get this to work, you're probably going to have to run this as a SynchronousCommand in the FirstLogonCommands section of the oobeSystem pass - I can't guarantee you it'll work, but it should. However, if it doesn't, your only real other option is to slipstream it into your WIM file before deployment (a good method) or use the auditUser pass when using sysprep /audit (or /audit /generalize, if this is going to be a deployment image). As to first run, see here.

Given that XP will be supported until 2014 (even if it isn't bugfix support), you may be right. Win7 does have a LOT of management and deployment benefits, is truly language-neutral, saves power, etc., but it does cost money and require Vista-era hardware (I'd say anything mid-range or better from mid-2006 to early 2007 and newer can run Vista or Win7 just fine). It will probably be determined at or around the next hardware cycle at most companies to determine if they want to milk XP for now, or move to Win7 and deal with the migration testing. Eventually they're going to have to decide if they're going to just run XP forever, or migrate off - and at that point, do they stick with Windows (version whatever at that point)? Move to Linux? Mac? Staying on XP will probably be difficult circa 2014 or later just given the lack of hardware that will actually have drivers written to work in that environment, not to mention any newer versions of apps if needed probably won't be XP certified at that point either (by 2014 we'll likely be well into Windows v8, with Windows v9 on the horizon, putting XP 3 versions behind and almost 14 years old).

I think you're all guessing (you might be right, but it's still a guess). It would probably be better if we got some logging data to confirm or deny our guesses.

Please make sure you read carefully the XP forum section's rules quite clearly listed right at the top of the XP forum, and in the same place while you are typingng posts, before posting in the XP section - specifically: I've moved this to the nLite section.

If you've gotten to the point where everything freezes, does CTRL+ALT+DEL work at all? If you've got a PS/2 (not USB) keyboard attached, does the scroll or numlock light illuminate/turn off when pressing these buttons? I ask because given your statements, it sounds like perhaps there's a hardware issue, but a little more information would confirm. You can also try configuring the machine to do a manual crash dump, but I'm not sure if that's necessary yet.

I'm moving this to the software hangout where it'll get more "software" eyeballs, as this really isn't a Win7 question specifically. I'll leave it linked from there, however, so it'll be easier for folks to find.