RogueSpear

Yesterday I signed up my organization to beta test hosted Gmail. Currently I'm hosting our email on an Exchange 2000 server. Our annual expenses associated with hosting our own email are getting to be fairly ridiculous and the other thing is that I'm getting a little tired of managing it all. I'm not an Exchange expert or anything and honestly I like the product less and less as time goes on. I figure with this hosted Gmail, everyone can have remote access to the email at any time (currently remote access to email requires a VPN connection) and then there are the other perks like storage space, access from a cell phone / PDA. I'm just wondering if it acts like the Gmail I'm used to or if there are any major features stripped out of it.

I completely gave up on the cert exams a couple of years ago. After so many years of constantly gearing up for one exam after another, I just burned out on it. And it's not as though I could ever expect a better paying job than I have now or have higher paying clients than what I have now. So there's little incentive for me at this point. I did learn something however - if you do things in the real world that are the "correct" answers on an exam, you'll get fired Now in all fairness I haven't taken a Microsoft exam in the 2003 server track. I hear they've made some improvements, but the NT4 and 2000 exams were a complete waste of time and really gave no indication regarding someone's skill level.

AutoGordianKnot installs XviD which is why I've never made an installer for it. If you'd like just XviD, Siginet made an installer for that which he posted over at RyanVM's site. I don't know what he's done with it regarding desktop and start menu shortcuts however.

Very nice guides you wrote there I've always been a Cisco guy myself, but a friend of mine told me that HP ProCurve switches come with a lifetime warranty?!? If this is the case I'll certainly be giving them a closer inspection.

I'm not sure if Dumpy Dooby is referring to the same problem I've always had with RealTek NIC drivers, but I've found that the only RealTek drivers that would function properly on a computer that is a domain member were those drivers that come with Windows XP. Anything newer, or more specifically, anything from RealTek would not work properly. Now with these latest drivers just put out, it would seem that after 4 years of my screaming about this, they finally looked at the issue. I did an install on an older HP-Compaq Evo 1020v and you could have knocked me over with a feather when it worked properly. I'm still not 100% convinced everything is perfect, but I'll be keeping my eye on it. One unfortunate issue I'm still having, and this has nothing to do with the DriverPacks at all, is that I still can't seem to make a RIS image that will make it through the text portion of the setup for both new generation RealTek NICs and older generation RealTek NICs. No matter what I do I just can't seem to solve that one.

I hope I'm not out of line here and perhaps I'm mistaken, but with over 8,000 domains being blocked I would guess that blocking those two is an oversight.

for a minute there I thought you came up with something I had never heard of.

It looks like you have no password entered for the autologon setting. If I'm not mistaken I think you need to have a password for autologon to work. EDIT: Specifically, in your autologon.reg file is what I am referring to.

There are several answers to your questions and most of them would be correct. The differences are mainly personal preference. As an example - I really don't see any point in renaming the various system directories. While people do it all the time I'm sure, to me it just seems to be inviting difficulties down the road. One thing I would suggest is to get all the regular stuff down first, and then if you like, experiment with renaming these directories. In my various scripts and installers I always try my best to use system variables wherever possible so that no matter what you call "C:\Documents and Settings", my scripts will find it properly, even if it's not on the C drive. But still, there are so many things that go on in the background that we don't know about or have any control over, it just seems like one more thing that could go wrong. Regarding registry tweaks. Indeed applying your registry tweaks from cmdlines.txt will apply the HKCU entries to the Default User profile, which is desirable so that the first user to log in (usually Administrator) will inherit those settings. One thing you'll find however is that not all of those settings will "stick". I haven't documented which do and which don't, so I apply my reg tweaks from both cmdlines.txt and during RunOnceEx. Then later in my RunOnceEx routine, I export the current user's registry hive and copy it over to the Default User profile. It's sort of a "belt and suspenders" approach, but it works. Regarding nLite. This is really tricky. I always lean toward conservative and remove what I believe to be very little. Actually it seems like quite a bit to me, but compared to a lot of nLite fans, I'm really not removing too much. If there's any doubt about removing a component, it stays. There's a rather lengthy, but extremely helpful, sticky thread in the nLite forums about what NOT to remove in order for things to work. Definitely check that out.

@gunsmokingman, I'm not trying to be a smartass here, but how is that script going to remove a computer from an organizational unit? @S1LV3RF1$#, what the script needs to do is tap into ADSI. And something you need to consider is that unless you want to delete the computer account from Active Directory, it will need to reside someplace. In other words, if you remove it from an OU do you then want it placed in a different OU? or would you want it placed in the Computers container? This isn't something that I've specifically scripted before, but I'll see what I can put together.

I'm not familiar with NetLimiter, so I'm wondering if it's possible for that program to tell you what process is trying to make this connection - even if it's just in a log file somewhere. If it does, you could narrow things down quite a bit.

I did this so long ago, I honestly don't remember the custom action I removed, but there is one in there that when removed will eliminate the activation screen at the end of setup. Unlike Windows XP, there doesn't seem to be an auto activation. At least not one that I found. So the first time you run Acrobat Pro the activation screen will pop up again. What I did was make up an AutoIt script to run Acrobat Pro, perform an online activation, and then close Acrobat Pro. I have the AutoIt script launch from my final RunOnceEx script so that does all this automatically at the end of the computer install. I'm sure that there's a sample script that does this in the AutoIt scripts sticky thread. Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that this is not an attempt to circumvent product activation, but merely to delay it in order to facilitate a truly unattended, beginning to end, computer install.

RyanVM should have a new version of his update pack within a week or so that will include the recently updated fixes. He also maintains a WMP10 addon that I'm sure he will also update with new hotfixes. As far as these postings here - I have started to post them over at Ryan's web site. With the tenuous situation regarding the Application Installs forum, I don't know how long things will last here.

I haven't had a chance to look at this yet, but you may want to take a peek in the custom actions table and see if there's a reboot action called somewhere. If so, it should be safe to delete it. By the way, does this version of Audition throw up a DEP error during installation like V1.5 ?

Update - 20060215 Removed WinRAR Updated DVD Identifier to V4.3.0 Updated QuickTime Alternative to V1.68 I'm removing the WinRAR installer because it doesn't come in a freeware version and it eventually times out if no purchase information is found. I'm leaving the Winamp installer and will continue to update it because Winamp can be use indefinately without the need to purchase it. Purchasing Winamp only activates more features. I will not be posting anymore installers that either time out after a trial period. I never have posted installers that require purchase information to run right from the start (that is to say without a trial period). Please don't request that I post any such installers as I will not respond.

No what I said was that you end up saving about 10MB over having each individual file. It's not a huge savings, but on a CD-R 10MB it can be gigantic. It's the difference of several installers being able to fit on the thing.

Removing languages will not save you a great deal of space. Especially given the effort it would take to remove them. One thing I do when I'm making a CD based install and space is pretty short is to compress all of the Driver Packs into one single 7z file. Ends up saving about 10MB.

I've messed around with Driver Genius and I found there were too many circumstances that it couldn't get everything. And that's understandable actually. Any driver with a really exotic control panel setup routine is what I really mean here. You'll most likely get enough files to support the device, but nothing else. What it is good for is when you come across a laptop or some ancient old computer where the owner no longer has the install media and the hardware vendor went no longer offers support for the device. I ran across this very circumstance with a NeoMagic display driver.

This can be enabled/disabled with a batch file just as easily. Just make a batch that deletes the registry key that the block list populates. For an enable batch just have it import BoardBabes .reg file.

Appears the host is back up again. @gilesw, could you email or PM me? Wonderin if you're on any IM clients. I was hoping to discuss being able to coordinate versions and such.

The hosting service seems to be down. Try again soon. This is the first time in the six weeks it's gone down that I'm aware of.

Update - 20060214 Added Windows Defender V1.1.1051 Beta 2 Updated CrapCleaner to V1.27.260 I'm going to leave the Microsoft AntiSpyware installer up for a little while in case people would still like that instead of this new version. Note that this new installer is pretty far down the list, so you'll need to do a lot of scrolling to find it.

The vast majority of my switchless silent installers run from svcpack.inf, which is before cmdlines.txt, and they are all repackaged .msi based installs. Also, my installers for Windows Journal Viewer and Photostory 3, both repackaged .msi installs, run from cmdlines.txt. So the Windows Installer service is certainly available at that point.

Update - 20060213 Added InstallShield Script Engine V7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Updated DVDFab Decrypter to V2.9.7.2

Ok here's a VBscript that does what you want a little bit more: Option Explicit On Error Resume Next Dim ws, fs, wn, objReg, strComputer, strPath, objComp Set ws = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set wn = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network") Set objReg = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & "." & "\root\default:StdRegProv") strComputer = wn.ComputerName strPath = ("WinNT://" & strComputer) Set objComp = GetObject(strPath) '** Subroutine; Process the built-in Administrator account Sub ProcessAdmin Dim objUser1, objUser2, objGroup1, objGroup2, flag Set objUser1=objComp.GetObject("user","Administrator") Set objGroup1=objComp.GetObject("group","Debugger Users") Set objGroup2=objComp.GetObject("group","Guests") objGroup1.Remove objUser1.AdsPath objGroup2.Add objUser1.AdsPath objUser1.SetPassword "password1" Set objUser2=objComp.MoveHere(objUser1.ADsPath,"Jerry") objUser2.Description="" objUser2.SetInfo If objUser2.AccountDisabled="False" Then flag=objUser2.Get("UserFlags")+2 objUser2.Put "UserFlags", flag objUser2.SetInfo End Sub '** Subroutine; Process the built-in Guest account Sub ProcessGuest Dim objUser1, objUser2 Set objUser1=objComp.GetObject("user","Guest") objUser1.SetPassword "password2" Set objUser2=objComp.MoveHere(objUser1.AdsPath,"Kramer") objUser2.Description="" objUser2.SetInfo End Sub '** Subroutine; Create and configure a fake Administrator account Sub FakeAdmin Dim objUser, objGroup, flag Set objUser=objComp.Create("user", "Administrator") Set objGroup=objComp.GetObject("group","Guests") objUser.SetPassword "password4" objUser.Description="Built-in account for administering the computer/domain" objUser.FullName="" objUser.SetInfo objGroup.Add objUser.AdsPath If objUser.AccountDisabled="False" Then flag=objUser.Get("UserFlags")+2 objUser.Put "UserFlags", flag objUser.SetInfo End Sub '** Subroutine; Copy current settings to the Default User profile Sub CopyDefUser Dim sysdrv, duProfile sysdrv = ws.ExpandEnvironmentStrings ("%SYSTEMDRIVE%") duProfile = fs.GetFile(sysdrv & "\Documents and Settings\Default User\NTUSER.DAT") If fs.FileExists(duProfile) Then fs.DeleteFile(duProfile),True ws.Run("reg save HKCU " & """" & duProfile & """"),0,True Set duProfile = fs.GetFile(sysdrv & "\Documents and Settings\Default User\NTUSER.DAT") duProfile.Attributes = duProfile.Attributes + 2 End Sub '** Run Tasks ProcessAdmin ProcessGuest FakeAdmin CopyDefUser objComp.Delete "user", "ASPNET" objComp.Delete "user", "HelpAssistant" objComp.Delete "user", "SUPPORT_388945a0" The subroutine "ProcessAdmin" renames the builtin Administrator account to Jerry, adds it to the Guests group, strips away the description, and disables it completely. This is pretty much SOP with XP's builtin Administrator account. If you want an Admin level user named Admin, you should create a whole new account instead of using the builtin one. The subroutine "ProcessGuest" renames the builtin Guest account to Kramer (yes, I like Seinfeld) and strips away the description. FakeAdmin simply creates an account named Administrator, gives it the default description of the builtin Administrator account, adds it to the Guests group, and makes it disabled. You could say that this account is a "decoy". CopyDefUser simply exports the HKCU of the currently logged in user and copies it over to the Default User profile. This is assuming the script is run later in your RunOnceEx scheme and all of your registry tweaks and software installs have been completed. Finally, all of the useless but potentially exploitable service accounts are deleted. I know this is a bit more than you were looking for, but perhaps it will give you some good example material to work with. ConfigAccounts.7z