RogueSpear

There is a size limit for individual posts with IPB. I don't know if the limitation here is administrator controlled or a limitation of IPB itself, but either way the post size limit is pretty generous. So I have three main posts in this thread with installers in them. Just scroll down a bit and you'll see the rest

In thinking about it, you could probably pick up an optioned out Cisco router on eBay for a good price.

The ability to run nLite unattended with a command argument. nlite.exe /preset:<filename.ini> /option Possible options: /qb to run unattended but visible /qn to run unattended and silent, kind of like .msi

Clustering w/ W2K requires Advanced Server last I knew. If you can afford two computer, two W2K AS licenses, the wasted electricity to run those two servers, etc (I think you get the idea) just to perform routing in a home environment then: a.) you have too much money b.) you must be a lab rat studying for cert exams I see nothing wrong with your methodology.. but doesn't it seem a bit like killing flies with a shotgun?

Well I sure hope you guys end up liking what I've done. This is my very first .NET application and in fact this is easily the most in depth programming I've done since the 1980's.

Honestly, I'm hoping to get a beta out very soon. I realize a beta is just that - imperfect.. but at the same time I'd like to at least have the vast majority of features implemented and the list of "known issues" not be too lengthy. I think people only have so much patience with testing things that take quite a while to run it's course. I'm going to try my best to get something out in the wild this weekend.

Update - 20060705 Added Microsoft .NET Framework Runtimes All-in-One installer and addon Added RogueSpear's Runtimes installer and addon Updated Java2 Runtime Environment to V5.0 Update 7

I imagine that it will be a mandatory part of Vista, and probably built-in to XP SP3 as well. Oh and lest we forget Office 2007.

My organization purchased software using this protection. The short story is that we promptly returned the software. The long story is that the computer that the software was installed on died shortly after installing the software. Ok, good excuse to get a new computer and upgrade. Installing it the second time was a real pain in the a**. It ended with a tech support call that was aggravating to say the least. So we returned the software and took our $7,000 elsewhere. In fact we ended up saving $5,500 and got better software with no silly protection. After that fiasco, I'm generally consulted on software purchases now and I always give a thumbs down on anything with protection like this. So you may prevent a certain amount of piracy, but you may also be turning away a certain number of potential customers. I suppose it depends on what market your software is aimed at. I think certain markets have a larger propensity for unauthorized usage than others.

Ugh.. the laptop I do all this kind of stuff on got screwed (due a mistake on my part). So I need to reinstall from scratch and all that's going to take a while. More bad news - I was working on the latest version of Ethereal and it just doesn't want to repack at all. I'm guessing it's something to do with WinPcap 3.1. Just when I thought things were going smoothly...

Never ceases to amaze me.. Troubleshooting 101 - start with practically no modifications and work your way up. @Sesshoumaru, I took a peek at your nLite settings file and you have quite a lot going on. If using the Integrator alone with 2.0.7 works fine, then I'm going to guess you're removing too much with nLite. My rule of thumb is "if I can't accurately detail what the consequences of removing <insert item here> are, then I don't remove it". I see way too many instances of people removing things and they don't have the slightest idea as to what it means. For the record, just like Kel, I am able to use the RVM Integrator to integrate 2.0.7 and then use nLite afterwards and I'm having no issues at all.

This happens to users on my network from time to time as well. I deployed the user profile hive cleanup service and that brought it under control, but it does still happen. The worst part is that it wipes out all of the users settings, etc and adopts whatever is in the default user profile. This usually generates a help call where I'm accused of "taking away" a certain program or feature. I've yet to discover anything in the event logs that would point me to a solution. So far I've just figured it's Microsoft's crappy software.

There's a link that the top of every single page entitled "Unattended Guide" that is a pretty good starting point. In fact I've yet to see as much information regarding unattended installs compiled in one place. The topic as a whole is about as wide as the ocean. So you're probably going to have to do a little bit of searching to find everything you need.

Update - 20060701 Updated 7-Zip to V4.42 Updated FileZilla to V2.2.25

I bet myself a million bucks you'd post that.

I don't want to steer you away from C# or anything, but you may want to seriously consider focusing on something cross platform. And I don't mean cross platform in the sense of writing one app for many operating systems. What I mean is whatever you learn could be applied somewhat to multiple operating systems. For me personally, my poor brain can only hold so much at once and learning something as involved as programming takes a lot of time and dedication. Now where we are probably similar is that I also had a bit of programming experience in the past. Nothing extraordinary, but I've programmed here and there since the early 1980's. Well I decided that I needed to get back into it because I had some things I wanted to do immediately. The word immediately is key here. I jumped into Visual Basic under VS2005 since I felt I could most easily adapt to that given my prior experience. Well now making the jump to using Eclipse and programming in Java is like learning how to perform heart surgury. I'll get there, but I really have a lot to learn just in the basics that experienced programmers take for granted. You may not picture yourself ever using anything but Windows, but hey you never know. I've been trying to become proficient with Linux lately and that means I wouldn't mind being able to do a little bit of coding for that environment as well. Anyhow that's just my 2 cents.

Update - 20060630 Updated KeePass Password Safe to V1.05

Update - 20060630 Added Paint.NET V2.63 Removed MSN Messenger 7.5 due to obsolescence Updated Adobe Reader to V7.0.8 Updated Crap Cleaner to V1.30.310 Updated OpenOffice.org to V2.0.3 I'll be attempting to update as many of the installers as I can this weekend. No promises though. Somewhere in this thread someone was looking for the source to the AutoIT scripts for the DAEMON Tools V4 installers. I erroneously told them to decompile the installers, forgetting I had protected them (for what reason I do not know). I came across the script files so here is the code: #NoTrayIcon Opt("TrayIconHide", 1) FileInstall("C:\DAEMONTools.exe", "C:\DAEMONTools.exe") Run(@ScriptDir & "\DAEMONTools.exe") WinWaitActive("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Welcome to the DAEMON Tools 4.03 Setup Wizard") ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Welcome to the DAEMON Tools 4.03 Setup Wizard", "Button2", 1, 1) WinWaitActive("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "License Agreement") ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "License Agreement", "Button2", 1, 1) WinWaitActive("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components") ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", 1017, 1, 1) ControlSend("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", 1017, "{TAB}") ControlSend("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", 1032, "{DOWN}") ControlSend("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", 1032, "{SPACE}") ControlSend("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", 1032, "{DOWN}") ControlSend("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", 1032, "{SPACE}") ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Components", "Button2", 1, 1) WinWaitActive("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Install Location") ControlSend("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Install Location", 1019, "C:\Program Files\CD-R\DAEMON Tools") ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Choose Install Location", "Button2", 1, 1) WinWaitActive("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Completing the DAEMON Tools Setup Wizard") ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Completing the DAEMON Tools Setup Wizard", "Button4", 1, 1) ControlClick("DAEMON Tools 4.03HE (32 bit)", "Completing the DAEMON Tools Setup Wizard", "Button2", 1, 1) RegDelete("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run", "DAEMON Tools") If FileExists (@ProgramsCommonDir & "\CD-R") Then DirCreate (@ProgramsCommonDir & "\CD-R") EndIf FileCopy (@ProgramsCommonDir & "\DAEMON Tools\DAEMON Tools.lnk", @ProgramsCommonDir & "\CD-R\DAEMON Tools.lnk", 1) DirRemove(@ProgramsCommonDir & "\DAEMON Tools", 1) I can't be certain anymore that this was the final code because some of it looks idiotic (like if a directory exists then create it ?), but this is what I found.

Here in the USA it seems we put up with this kind of crap all the time. If anything is going to be done regarding WGA, it'll happen in Europe where end users' rights are a little better protected. Although with some of the DMCA-like activity over there recently, I'm not holding my breath either. For the record, I've already encountered multiple workstations that are legit and they register as not legit. Thus far Microsoft has not provided any solution other than to complete reinstall. Nice

You apparently didn't search that much. And didn't even notice the RIS subforum right at the top of this one. Take a look in there and you'll find everything you need to know.

It's quite easy to make your own service in .NET. I suppose you could make a service that appears similar to a legit service. Hiding in plain sight.

You may want to check out some of the sample code that GunSmokingMan has posted or even go to my thread for the post install script pack. You're bound to find an example of just about anything that you would ever need. EDIT: I just saw that you've done that

If you're looking to use VB, you'd write a line something like this: Dim strSystemRoot As String = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables("%SystemRoot%") Dim oeminfo As New IO.StreamWriter(strSystemRoot & "\System32\OEMINFO.INI", False) oeminfo.WriteLine("blah blah blah") oeminfo.Close Another way to do it, since this is an .ini file, would be to treat it as an actual .ini file even though we're only going to write to it one time and probably never look at it again in code. <DllImport("kernel32.dll")> _ Private Overloads Shared Function WritePrivateProfileString( _ ByVal lpApplicationName As String, _ ByVal lpKeyName As String, _ ByVal lpString As String, _ ByVal lpFileName As String) As Integer End Function Dim strSystemRoot As String = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables("%SystemRoot%") Dim oeminfo As New String = strSystemRoot & "\System32\OEMINFO.INI" WritePrivateProfileString("General", "Manufacturer", "My Company", oeminfo) In order to generate some WMI code I use Microsoft's WMI Code Creator. You will definately have to tweak the output quite a bit to get what you want, but it works. I find working with WMI in VBS much more straight forward than in VB. I don't know why it has to be this way. Here is a little snippet that queries for a CD\DVD drive: Try Dim searcher As New ManagementObjectSearcher("root\CIMV2", "SELECT * FROM Win32_CDROMDrive") For Each queryObj As ManagementObject In searcher.Get() If queryObj("id") = Microsoft.VisualBasic.Left(strSource, 2) Then MsgBox("Match") Catch err As ManagementException MsgBox("An error occurred while querying for WMI data: " & err.Message, MsgBoxStyle.Critical) End Try Basically all it does is tell you if your known source (strSource) resides on a CD/DVD vs. a hard disk.

I actually started to put code together in VB2005 to do this. It's really nothing more than writing a standard text file with the values you get from WMI (or other) queries.

Words of wisdom. Well said.