Thinkster

Take a look at my thread as it sound similar to what you want to do... Customized Sysprep

I'd like to know if there is a way to download NIC drivers that exist in other Planets??

Yes, I do want to make a Dos Boot CD, except it is not a Novell Network, It's a Microsoft Network (Windows 2000 Server). Also, when I make the floppies from Symantec Ghost 8 (Corporate), it requires (2) floppies. I would love to be a ble to have a choice of multiple NIC's, but right now my floppy has and NDIS driver for a Marvel Yukon card only as that is what is on most of the systems. Do you have an example of your Config.sys or what I do if I need more then 1.44 MB?

Sorry to hear you have an Optiplex... My suggestion is to dump it and build a decent system from scratch and you won't have the problems your having. All the newer Dell PC's now are JUNK! They are using non-standard connections, funky bios and the quality is very poor now.. Now I understand how they can sell a whole system for $399...

Oh no! The view count is up to 240 now!!!! OK, I got a good quote: “Patience is a virtue.” -Benjamin Franklin

Here's a quote: "Try being more patient, don't post so many topics at one time and use better grammar." and "Oh no..."

I would like to have the Remote Desktop Connection be able to be enabled and also the web based version of it located at: Add/Remove Programs/Windows Components/Internet Information Services (IIS)/Worldwide Web Service/Remote Desktop Web Connection. And I'd like to give access to two users in adition to adminstrator (which is automatically given access). Is this possible to do unattended?

Looks alright, but I wouldn't call it "PostInstall.cmd" if it's called with CMDLINES.TXT at T9 because it's not really Post, it's During. Also, I wouldn't install WMP10, I think version 9 is much better. And hotfixes, I used to do all those in the i386 (updates folder I believe) and I had a svcpack.inf file that refered to them including the qchain.exe. But now I just use Ryan's Pack...

I have used Symantec Ghost Boot wizard to create a Network boot disk, but unfortunately Symantec did not think this through very well as it only lets you make floppy disks! So I created the boot disks and had to add the NDIS2 Driver for a Marvel Yukon NIC since it's not included in the choices within Ghost. So the floppy disks work fine, but I need to put this on a bootable CD, so that I don't have to use the Floppy's. The bootable CD should be the same as the floppys in that it loads the NIC driver and obtains an IP through DHCP. I've tried several different techniques to try to accomplish this, but no luck. Am wondering why Symantec only allows you to create floppy's as many new systems have no floppy drives!

I don't think it can be a permissions problem as I can save a newly created document from any other application to the Mapped Win98 PC and it saves fine. I'm not attempting to open Office 2003 files on the old machine, just simply use it as a common storage area. To me it just seem like a bug that Microsoft needs to fix or some stupid "feature" they added, but a restriction or limitation shouldn't really be considered a feature though...

Have a friend with a small Network of 3 computers. They are of all different ages, so the oldest one (Windows 98) has Office 97 on it and a shared 'My Documents' folder in it with permissions for Read & write. The other two systems are Windows XP, but one has Office XP, the other Office 2003. Firewall is disabled on the XP Systems. Now here's the thing, on the system with Office 2003, If you try to save a document from within Word, Excel, Powerpoint to Drive M: (which is a mapped network drive from the Windows 98 documents folder), It fails and gives some sort of error indicating path not found. It will allow local saving though, and then I can manually copy the locally saved file to Drive M: just fine. I can also save from within any other application like Acrobat or Photoshop to the M: drive. Also, the other XP system that has Office XP is able to save fine from within an office application to the Network drive M: So besides dumping Office 2003 (which I don't really like anyways), is there someway to make this work or did Microsoft just screw up with their Office 2003? (I know they did with Outlook 2003!)

This is somewhat related to the sysprep script I needed to query MAC Address and look it up in database to find appropriate ComputerName & ProductKey. In the script, ComputerName is represented by the string %strComputername% and Product key is represented by %strProduct%. I have 25 machines and although they need to be pretty much identical,there are a few that will have some external hardware and applications. So I have a few different post install files (postinst1.bat, postinst2.bat.....postinst12.bat,etc.) and what I need to do is Compare the machine name OR product key to something and if it matches, rename the file from postintx.bat to postinstall.bat. I tried this, and the script/command window just exits IF %strComputername%="Gateway-01" REN postinst1.bat postinstall.bat else echo. IF %strComputername%="Gateway-02" REN postinst2.bat postinstall.bat else echo. IF %strComputername%="Gateway-03" REN postinst3.bat postinstall.bat else echo. What am I doing wrong??

I think it would be pretty hard to do because when on CD, winnt.sif is Read only and to do what you need to do, it seems like a portion of winnt.sif would need to be re-written depending on which PC it' being installed to. I was recently faced with the same sort of need, but I ended up just using an OEM 'Master Install' product key and a generic PC Name. After the installation, my postinstall script kicks in and then the cleanup script also checks the PC's hardware address and finds what the correct Computer name & Product key should be and 'writes' that into the sysprep configuration file. Then sysprep kicks in and after it's all done, PC has correct name & Product key!

I'm looking to do something similar to that in that I want to maintain a set of desktop icons (shortcuts) that are approved like 'My Documents' 'My Computer' 'Internet Explorer' 'Firefox' 'Real Player', etc. then if someone adds a shortcut or saves a file to the desktop to have it automatically deleted each time windows is booted (doesn't matter at which point). I'm thinking I need to store the approved shortcut names in a file or somewhere in the actual command script and have some kind of command that compares the current desktop files/shortcuts to what's supposed to be there and if something doesn't match, Delete it...

Why bother messing with Home edition? It sucks in comparison to Pro. Everytime I have to work on a home edition PC, I'm always running into limitations and things that can't be done easily. So i would dump Home edition if I were you.

Am I missing something here? Why would you want to integrate this "tool"? What is the purpose of it? I mean does it actually fix something in windows or is it some kind of "ECM" ??

Yes, that seems to work!! I made the following changes though: ECHO ComputerName=%strComputername%>>userdata.inf ECHO ProductKey="%strProduct%">>userdata.inf COPY /b sysprep1.inf + userdata.inf sysprep.inf My sysprep1.inf contains everything but the [user Data] section my userdata.inf contains only [user Data] FullName="Some Department" OrgName="Some Organization" And a carriage return after the orginization name. The lines of code you gave added the Machine Name & Product Key in Quotes (Yay!) to the User Data section and the copy combined the stuff like it should have! Regarding the errors I had before with "...not found." I think what I added: PATH c:\Sysprep;C:\Windows\System32;C:\Windows\System32\wbem CD \ CD Sysprep fixed that issue... Thanks again to all those who helped on this!!

Let's say I have a user named 'Bill' with Administrator privelages on a local machine. I will find a sub-folder in Documents & Settings named 'Bill'. Now, I want to add the computer Bill is using to the Domain named 'ETVCORP', once I join the domain with the proper credentials, I find a new sub-folder in Documents & Settings named 'Bill.etvcorp' What are the differences between these two folders? And how can I be sure that Bill's local account settings, prefernces, etc. will rollover to the bill.etvcorp account?? Also, I want to make sure that once Bill's computer is on the domain that he no longer has administrative priveledges.

Not sure on this, but knowing how picky everything else has been with names/paths, etc., it probably has to have quotes around the Product key. Per Ref.chm, it shows: Syntax ProductKey = "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx" in the [userData] section of Sysprep.inf the script above does add ProductKey to the correct secion of sysprep.inf, but the product key is not in quotes " ". So last favor! is there an easy way to add the quotations in there so when echo'ing or writing the variable %strProduct% that it shows like this: "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx" rather then xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx I've tried doing this: set xx=" set pk=%xx%%strProduct%%xx% Echo Product Key should be: %pk% SET T1=Fedit -add -once -f Sysprep.inf -s UserData %T1% ProductKey=%pk% Which Echo's it correctly with "Quotes", but when written to sysprep.inf using Fedit, the quotes are not there. So I'm thinking this may be a problem with Fedit that it can't handle quotes... Or does anyone for sure know if this really matters when minisetup looks for the product key in the sysprep.inf file?

I kept getting the following crap only when the mac.bat was ran automatically: The system cannot find the file specified. The system cannot find the file specified. Computer Name should be: Product Key should be: Now editing Sysprep.inf 'Fedit' is not recognized as an internal or external command When I ran the .bat manually by double clicking it, it ran fine. Apparantly the command window and Microsoft Windows in general are Retarted! I was finally able to get it to work with the following: @echo off PATH c:\Sysprep;C:\Windows\System32;C:\Windows\System32\wbem TITLE Sysprep Customizer ECHO Waiting for NIC to initialize... ping -n 15 localhost> NUL ECHO Determining Machine Name and Product Key... ECHO. CD \ CD Sysprep For /f "usebackq delims=," %%i IN (`getmac /fo csv /nh`) do ( For /f "usebackq delims=, tokens=1-3" %%a IN (`type mac.txt`) DO If %%i EQU %%a ( Set strComputername=%%b Set strProduct=%%c ) ) Echo Computer Name should be: %strComputername% Echo Product Key should be: %strProduct% ECHO Now editing Sysprep.inf ... SET T1=Fedit -add -once -f Sysprep.inf -s UserData %T1% ComputerName=%strComputername% %T1% ProductKey=%strProduct% ECHO [UserData] section completed... ECHO Removing Startup Entry... REG DELETE HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v Sysprep /f ECHO About to Sysprep System... REM ** SYSPREP COMMAND HERE ** CLS EXIT

On my computer, I went to Regedit and to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system] I typed my text in the "LegalNoticeText" String. I typed it as one continuous "paragraph", but I put "~~" where I wanted LineFeeds/Carriage Returns to go. After I hit [OK], I went back and right clicked on LegalNoticeText and selected 'Modify Binary Data'. I then changed the Hex Data for ~~ (7E007E00) to Hex Data for CR/LF (0D000A00). Great, It looks fine on my system! However, when I export this section of registry as a .reg file and try importing that on another system, It doesn't import any of the LegalNoticeText, only the LegalNoticeCaption. What is going on here? Is there some trick to doing this? I'm thinking it doesn't like the CR/LF code when importing.

And here I thought I had it all worked out!! OK, the script works if Windows is up & running and I go to my Sysprep folder (as administrator) and double click the mac.bat script. It echoes the correct Machine name & Product key and even modifies my sysprep.inf file. However, If I try to do it automated by adding the following: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce] "Sysprep"="C:\\Sysprep\\mac.bat" The script launches and I see the command windows before the Desktop icons appear, and then in the command window, it says "System can not find ..." so If I close it out, wait for the desktop icons to appear as well as the Local Area Network Icon to appear by the clock, and double click on it, then it works. I'm guessing it needs to wait for the stupid Marvell Yukon built in network card to initialize or something.... Is there a way to delay launching the script, so that it starts after windows is completely initialized (dektop icons & all) ??

Because I am using an OEM "Master Install" Product key for the unattended install, then after everything is installed and configured, I'm using sysprep to strip the master install product key as well as the generic Machine name, so that the machine will be properly named and key'd and joined on the domain. There may be another way to do this, but this is what I've come up with so far.. I'm open to suggestions though...

OK, Got it to work! Thank you both! Now quick question, does this script have any dependencies as I tried running it on my friends laptop (added his MAC ID & PC Name, ProdKey to database) and it complained about 'getmac' saying that it wasn't an internal or external command or something like that.. Also, the laptop was XP Home in case that matters...

I'm faced with a possilbe dilema here in that during my Unattended XP Install in CMDLINES, I have a user account created named "deptuser" and I set Administrative privelages: net user deptuser secretpw /add /active:yes /passwordchg:no /expires:never net localgroup Administrators deptuser /add net localgroup users deptuser /delete Also, I have it modify winlogon with: "DefaultUserName"="deptuser" "DefaultPassword"="secretpw" "AutoLogonCount"="1" "AutoAdminLogon"="1" After the Unattended install of XP, the very first time, it should autologon the above user and perform the post installation of software, reboot, autologon again with above user, perform cleanup & a few other tweaks, then run sysprep: start /wait %systemdrive%\Sysprep\sysprep.exe -reseal -quiet -mini -reboot my sysprep.inf contains the information needed to automatically join the domain. After sysprep runs mini-setup, I think the server takes over permissions for 'deptuser' and won't let me run my final customizations and downgrade local user account 'deptuser' from "Administrators" to "Users". These final customizations I'm trying to run from cmdlines.txt in C:\sysprep\i386\$oem$ Any suggestions or ideas?