RogueSpear

While it would be ideal to have 100% support for Windows 2000, realistically speaking, it's an OS that fell out of general support already and it closing in on 7 years old. It would have been nice if Microsoft had made good on SP5, but it seems that fell victim to the NT4 SP7 axe.

I have to apologize for not putting out any updates for so long now. I've been putting all of my time into a new utility that should go into Beta soon. And hopefully I'll be able to incorporate configuring all of the settings in 500_Settings.ini into this new utility.

That was running through my mind, but I rationalized it by assuming the BIOS files would not allow you to install XP on a computer that it wasn't meant for. This would presumably mean Dell, Gateway, Emachines, etc. Furthermore, the key codes would not be a part of this, only the files. The other thing I thought about was the fact that people don't seem to have a crisis of conscious when it comes to distributing patched OS files - uxtheme.dll, tcpip.sys, etc. I'm not a lawyer, but that was my take on it.

I'm not familiar with nPop, but a lot of programs give you an option to use the proxy settings as set by IE. Perhaps this is an option somewhere with nPop.

BartPE supports this natively and I use it quite often. I'm running into more and more workstations that have no floopy and no optical drive, so booting to a USB device is the only real option for diagnostics and repair.

You can run .vbs files from cmdlines.txt just fine, however you're limited to cscript.exe. On another note, would it be beneficial to make a repository of the BIOS files for various makes and models?

The only thing I would caution you about with Delphi is to make sure that if you're going to be connecting to a database (Oracle, SQL, etc.), avoid using the Borland Database Engine. Where I work, they contracted with a company (against my vehement objections) that live and breathe by Borland development products. And that BDE is worst piece of technology to come out in the longest time. On the other hand, a guy I work with whips out some pretty neat utilities using Borland's C++ Builder.

ScriptLogic puts out a package called Installer Design Studio that's supposed to have many of the same capabilities as AdminStudio. I wasn't too thrilled with the interface or the workflow, but after so long with AdminStudio I'm sure that I'm a bit biased. I'm also sure that if the product works just fine, you could adjust to the interface. I don't know how much it is, but I can't imagine anything being as much as AdminStudio. I've seen another title out called InstallAware Studio Admin but I really don't know anything about it. One thing is that these people sure seem to like throwing in the phrases "Studio" and "Admin" into their products.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=56824

Java requires a runtime. And if I might inject a little opinion in the thread I can't stand Java apps.

Off the top of my head I would suggest AutoIt.

In my previous experience that BSOD has been due to a video or sound driver problem. Perhaps try replacing one of those drivers with the Dell supplied driver (even though it's probably older).

I'm not sure what your expectations were exactly, but the DriverPacks seem to work pretty well for an awful lot of people. Certainly as well or better than just about anything I can think of in a Microsoft world. As I eluded to previously, there are some difficulties with some hardware, but the blame for those problems is almost always on the part of the driver author (meaning the company). Having said that, I doubt you'll find a better solution for integrating device drivers into your source.

Everything with unattended installs requires that you do your homework. Why else would there be several thousand threads in a couple dozen forums on this very topic. This is not a topic for the technological dilettante. If you don't know how to use something you can't reasonably expect good results. It's like buying Adobe Photoshop and expecting that $500 purchase is going to turn you into the next Ansel Adams. It doesn't work like that. A couple of other points: This thread is a textbook example of why most of us here who do release our projects for public consumption don't "sell" anything. It takes up enough spare time that is in short supply already just to keep the things up, let alone deal with anything additional. Most problems associated with the DriverPacks have one of two causes: 1. PEBKC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). 2. The hardware vendors. Regulars here are probably sick and tired of my rants about inept hardware manufacturers (cough RealTek cough) so I won't go into another one. But virtually every single hardware company that has a driver in the DriverPacks has released a real stinker at one point or another. Unfortunately some tend to release nothing but.

It's not available yet. This is a well documented issue.

Most of these types of surveys are made up of radio buttons and drop down lists. Usually the only place you type anything in is as the end where they have the catch-all "comments".

So I get an email from Symantec to take an online survey regarding how happy (or not) I am with their enterprise products. There was no promise of a free coffee mug or a chance for a free entry in some sweepstakes that nobody ever wins. But I really didn't need to be buttered up in order to take this survey. Anytime someone from Symantec wants to hear just how much I think they suck, I'm more than happy to give them an earful. Well I went several pages into the survey and sure enough, it craps out on me OK, lets try this again... same result. Finally I gave up. Even their surveys suck. Now in all fairness, I do like their corporate AntiVirus product. But pretty much everything else they make, and that's a lot of products, simply suck like they worship the god of sucking. I did a similar online survey from Aladdin regarding their eSafe product. They received an incredibly negative response from me. Within 5 hours I had received no less than 3 phone calls from 3 different people over there. They then proceeded to spend an incredible number on man hours looking into the complaints I had (using WebEx). After two weeks, they finally conceded that there were some "issues" with their software. Maybe they warned someone over at Symantec about me and that's why the survey died halfway through.

It's possible that the filename needs to be 8.3 compliant, though I haven't tested this out myself.

Another option would be to copy the source down to the hard drive and register that location during cmdlines.

WMI is not available from svcpack or cmdlines. I would suggest trying the script from RunOnceEx.

I actually get paid to workout at my job for up to 3 hours a week. I have always been into weight training, but now for the last couple of months I can hardly do any serious weight training at all. Going to be needing surgury on my wrists pretty soon I'm going to be out of commission for a few months if they need to do both wrists (hands). I should probably look like a doughboy by the time I'm recovered. Now nobody laugh too hard at this.. but my wife has been doing Tae Bo for the last 7 years or so, in addition to her weight training. So every now and then I'll pop one of those tapes in and they kick my butt every time.

I would imagine that there must be a script somewhere around here to perform activation. Microsoft exposes activation through WMI, so it's easily scriptable.

I doubt that the RealTek drivers will work with the Analog Devices SoundMax. The problem may simply be a limitation, either a technical limitation or an artificial one introduced by Analog Devices. When I first started reading your thread I was thinking what a cool idea it is to use two sound cards like that. Then it occurred to me that I already do something similar, and perhaps this would work for you. I use a bluetooth headset all the time for things like Dragon Naturally Speaking and Skype, but I maintain normal system sounds running through my sound card. Perhaps if you have bluetooth on your computer you could pick up a cheap handsfree headset or if you have a bluetooth headset for your cell phone just pick up a cheap USB bluetooth adapter. Even if you were to need both items, it shouldn't cost more than $90 and you get the added bonus of having a wireless headset to game with.

http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/ It's not free, but I've found some extremely useful information there for someone who is a complete noob to Visual Studio. They cover primarily C# and Visual Basic, so you should find material that's helpful.

It's been a long time since I've visited this thread. I can't believe what you've been able to do with this utility. Fantastic work