Thinkster

Ahh... I see. But If I do this on my own computer, it's not going to import it into my registry right? I just want to be able to view it to pull some important settings then unload it.

Tried Regedit, but "Load Hive" is greyed out so it wont let me. And how do I copy the whole registry over? The PC is NOT bootable, so I can't go into regedit from it's Windows. There are many bad sectors on the drive and of course some are in the System files area. The hive files I was able to copy by putting the drive in my computer as a secondary drive were located in the System Volume Information\_restore{xxxxxx-xxxxxxxx} folder. So I need to somehow be able to "reconstruct" the registry or at least view it based on the hive files. I would imagine there must be some utility to do this?

I have a customers computer that has a failing hard drive and won't boot windows. So I've installed a new drive, however there are settings that I need to be able to get that are installed in the registry on the failed drive. I was able to transfer over the SAM, SOFTWARE, SECURITY, SYSTEM, DEFAULT files to a good drive but How can I view these files or convert them back into a .reg file or something?

I'm trying to streamline things and this is one of those things I would like to automate as it gets tedious when doing it on a 100 machines and then having to reboot. I already know the settings I would like to put, but I need some way to automate the Network Setup Wizard and make the C:\Temp a Full Access Shared folder in each computer on the 'Workgroup' network. I found an AutoIt script, but I don't know what to do with it and besides it's not in English so it's somewhat useless for me...

Are the laptops the same manufacturer? I had a similar problem with a bunch of Gateway's that I needed to create a custom unattended setup for, but all I could make was a VLK version to work properly. I wanted to use the keys on the stickers that were on each machine. Well I ended up taking the manufactuers CD and utilizing the i386 directory and then tweaking it with nLite. I did the sysprep method and thanks to some folks here was able to create a script that would query the machines MAC ID and look that up in a database to provide the appropriate Key for that paticular machine. It did work though!

I would like something that can detect when a new account has been created and then have it place something in the startup for that account so that when that person logs in, the script runs once and then goes away. I've seen something before that I think does this called ProfileMonitor.exe that always runs in startup that I believe does this but don't know where to find it or modify it...

I have some custom tweaks & settings that get applied and show up fine on the first user account. However when other user accounts are created and those users login, the tweaks and settings are not applied. Now I already know about setting up tweaks and stuff in the Default template which I have applied during CMDLINES. What I would like to do though is have something that detects a new user account and only runs a script the very first time they log in. Any easy way to go about this?

How about an English Version?? Norweigen does no good here and I don't know any Norweigen's to translate!...

Thanks, you were right. I wouldnt have found that one... I expanded the nlite.in_ deleted those lines and re-compressed it with makecab and all is well now!

I recently redid my build using the latest nLite, Ryan'sVM pack and DriverPacks and now even after I setup a user account, it always tries to login as Administrator and pops up with a box saying "The system can not log you in...." I've checked my Winnt.sif and I don't see anywhere where I tell it to Autologin or anything. Is there somewhere else this might have got implemented like by using the newer nLite or DriverPacks or ?? Here's a section in my Winnt.sif where I think it would show if I had AutoAdmin login and the count, but as you can see, I don't have that: [GuiUnattended] EncryptedAdminPassword="No" AdminPassword = "password" TimeZone=04 OEMSkipRegional=1 OemSkipWelcome=1 Any ideas?

I would prefer to be able to put all of the "approved" updates/patches on a CD and have some sort of script or method to install all of them, then reboot. There have been some hotfixes in the past that have caused problems with certain applications that work with a paticular version of a .dll or other system file. I would like to test all the patches on a test system before compiling them onto a cd that can be deployed. I don't want to have to go to each system individually and have it wait to download 25+ updates and then install them. So would something like Autopatcher work and if so, where do I get a full version rather then just a monthly update?

Without creating a whole new build with slipstreamed or integrated hotfixes and installing that on an existing system, is there a simple way to get current critical hotfixes, etc. installed WITHOUT using windows autoupdate? I have disabled autoupdate on the users systems so that updates can be approved first. I believe the updates are current upto June 2006, so I need some sort of automated way to install July-Oct 2006 Critical updates. Autopatcher looked promising, but at 42mb, I can't see it containing that much, plus when I ran the .exe, nothing happens.

I tried the Install Block (Bash Software) and although it worked, it had an icon down by the clock and after a few uses, it crashed and was missing a .dll. I'm thinking there must be something that runs at kernal mode or maybe some kind of group policy to disallow specific installations?? But assuming cost is not a factor, what is this "third party program" called??

It's getting closer to what I'm looking for, but ultimately what I would like to do is to restrict just certain installations, not all. I'm hoping there is some way I can get a program that will recognize a specific program's "signature" and allow me to add that to a block list. So say I introduce iTunes, AIM or MSN Messanger to it, it will be able to recognize something in it and not allow it to install. But say I try to install Winamp, I would like that to be able to install without any problems.

This wont work because I cant set permissions on a folder unless it is a shared folder. In case you did not know, Im not using NTFS nor will I because of all the problems and pain it is to deal with when it comes to support issues.

I know this is not an installation question, but rather the preventions of installation. I have a lot of customers in a business environment that are downloading and installing iTunes. Besides telling them not to do this, is there any way I can restrict the installation of this paticular application to begin with? I wouldn't mind if they downloaded winamp or something but I don't want to see ANY Apple software on these PC's!

I would suggest dumping the ECS motherboard and get a real brand as well as going with IDE Hard Drives! Trust me, you'll end up with a lot less headaches and much better compatibility with the applications your trying to use as well as many others...

I don't want to restrict all the items that are restricted with a limited account as they will constantly bug an admin for things. I was hopping there was some sort of registry entry like UserNameChange=0 Or maybe a setting in group policy gpedit.msc

I have a system with four user accounts in addition to Administrator. The users tend to change their names from their actual names to Nicks or stupid things. I would like to prevent them from having this ability or to have it revert back after computer is rebooted. I would imagine it's a registry setting or something. Or maybe I need a script to do the revert??

I sure hope it's better then Office 2003, because that version really sucks!!! 2003 has a lot of bugs and the Outlook layout is terrible!

I recently acquired 4 systems of which I wanted to format and do a clean install of my latest unattended windows xp sp2 that contains the latest BTS DriverPacks. The machines were (2) HP Pavilions, (1) Sony Vaio, (1) eMachines. They all seem to have onboard sound and use some flavor of AC'97. The first machine I tried (eMachines) everything installed ok, except the Sound Driver. In device manager, it has an explanation mark next to Intel .....AC'97. When I click properties, it reports, "This device cannot start (Code 10)" I tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it and same problem. I tried slapping a Sound Blaster in the system and that worked fine! So I proceded to the Sony VAIO and the other (2) HP's and same exact problem, No Sound and same error code in device manager. I don't recal having this problem with my previous unattended build (which contained older BTS DriverPacks) so I'm assuming there's a problem with the sound drivers on the latest DriverPack so that's why I'm posting to see if anyone else has had the same problem or knows of a way to fix this without buying (4) soundblaster cards.

Thank you, Will add to my winnt.sif and reburn & test.. Guess my previous builds had that statement and my latest with nLite didn't get it..

No I don't... Is that a Prerequisite to using the & [FavoritesEX] ??

Any ideas on this or maybe there's another workaround??

These have worked in the past, but now are no longer working with my latest build that has sp2 slipstreamed: [FavoritesEx] Title1="CNN.url" URL1="http://www.cnn.com" Title2="Google.url" URL2="http://www.google.com" Title3="NBC.url" URL3="http://www.nbc.tv" Title4="eBay.url" URL4="http://www.ebay.com" Title5="Amazon.url" URL5="http://www.amazon.com" Title6="HP.url" URL6="http://www.hp.com" Title7="Google Maps.url" URL7="http://maps.google.com" [URL] Home_Page=http://www.yahoo.com Search_Page=http://www.yahoo.com IE defaults to MSN.com and none of the favorites show up in any of the accounts including admin. Is this no longer valid with SP2, did MS change something or does a setting in nLite or something else prevent this from working like it did before?