RogueSpear

You can always decompress the installer and edit the script yourself if you want it to install to the default. And I specifically stated that I turned off autostart. Just enable it, or again, edit the script to not disable it.

Well thank you Ma'am I'm glad you can make use of them. I'm also glad you decided to sign up here. Ryan's place is great, but there's always room for two great places right? I'm sure you will find a lot of other incredibly useful things here.

I always use Ryan's pack for the XP stuff and, like you, apply the msp files to my aip of Office 2003. For some reason, some of the Office patches don't seem to register as installed. I'm guess that there's a registry entry that's not being made properly or at all. It's interesting that you say /integrate is the "correct" way however. When you really look at it from a technical standpoint, Microsoft's prescribed method is actually inferior. Like other things in life, the official way is not always the best.

I came up with this little snippet for detecting the drive with your Windows CD in it: For $drive = 65 to 90 If FileExists(chr($drive) & ":\WIN51IP.SP2") Then $OEM = chr($drive) & ":\OEM" Next You wouldn't believe it but it took me several hours to figure this one out Oh yea, actually that code up there detects which drive, but it also sets a variable for the directory \OEM on the CD.

I've had SoundMax chips install as VIA Vinyl Seriously, so I removed the VIA drivers from the DP and then it installed as a C-Media Finally, when the proper hwid was added, the problem went away. But you sure can see some strange things happen.

I can host all of these if you guys like. I think I have the second post in this thread, so I could always edit that for the links.

Using RyanVM's latest update pack, the only items that appear in Windows Update for me is an Office 2003 update and a SharePoint 2003 update. I still think the Microsoft Update (as opposed to Windows Update) has some issues that need to be worked out, but you don't mention how you're integrating your hotfixes.

It's easy enough to test it out yourself. Give it a shot. Just reboot after changing the file over. The first thing you should notice is that it takes forever and a day for your NIC to initialize.

I would say that it's closer to being the worst way to go. And disable DNS? Yea disable it if you don't want to your computer to be able to resolve domain names to IP addresses (ie - web browse).

I've discovered something rather interesting and I'm surprised I never did notice this previously. I have always integrated blocking lists within my switchless silent installer and .msi file installer of SpywareBlaster. I always figured you may as well apply all this stuff while installing that (during svcpack.inf). Well I tried to incorporate this domain blocking list into the installer and then I did some checking after. It seems that the ActiveX and Cookie blocking entries take just fine, but for some reason the domain blocking entries do not. They are actually placed into the HKCU hive of the Default User account. I triple checked my InstallShield project files and sure enough they're defined as HKLM. None of this is really of consequence to the list, I just though some might be interested in knowing in case they were thinking of another method to integrate it. So I stick with integration from cmdlines.txt for this list.

I got burned on Diskeeper pretty bad back around version 7. The program actually corrupted system files on a few dozen workstations. I'm sure they've probably resolved all that long ago, but as the old saying goes "God forgives, I don't". I switched to PerfectDisk which has never failed me and has excellent management through Group Policy.

I apologize for the delayed response, but all DNS issues seem to be resolved in the states.

I discovered this myself when working with a slightly older Dell desktop recently. So much for "unified" drivers

Dear God, close to 8MB for hard disk defragmenting utility? What do they got in there anyway? I have PerfectDisk down to 2.24MB.

Interesting. I've never heard of something quite like that before. But it's definately a useful bit of information to keep in mind the next time I run into a problem like this.

That's correct. And I think really only necessary at this point if your install runs on a computer with an ATI video card.

Earlier today, in the morning, MSFN was running very fast and everything was fine. Then later in the day it suddenly stopped, yet I continued to receive emails indicated people were posting to threads I subscribe to. So I started to change DNS servers figuring that my local ISP servers were screwed up, but still no luck. So then I went to one of my often used web site, dnsstuff.com, and they seem to be showing a problem. I don't know if this would be use to you or not but here is the LINK. Here is the text I was receiving from the link posted above:

I don't have any experience with trying to unattend XP Home. Perhaps there's some difference?

I've only been with them for two weeks. What I meant was that I went with them because of the reliability and uptime of some web sites that use them.

Just as a matter of interest.. if you'd like to be able to manipulate accounts and passwords and not have the passwords in plain text, there's a nice little command line utility called Supercrypt (used to be called lsrunas). I don't have very much need for it, but when I do it's a lifesaver. http://www.lansweeper.com/ls/lsrunas.aspx

There's no reason to chose one over the other, especially when it comes to security. As someone once said to me (regarding security, not my trousers) "wear both your belt and suspenders"

I did something a little similar. In the VBscripts that I've posted here, an example is that I install the Cisco VPN client only if the script determines that it's running on a laptop computer. Or the one I use daily is determining if the computer is actually a VM by reading the BIOS strings and then if so, install VMware Tools.

I just had a client of mine hook me up with DreamHost.com. If you sign up for a year the price comes down. I'm getting 1TB per month bandwidth. The donation I just sent should cover about 1/3 the cost of your first year I know others have been extremely happy with their reliability for the last year, which is why I went with them. EDIT: Oh and they support everything you outlined above. EDIT2: If you want me to host anything until you're squared away, just let me know.

If you remove them, it should clear up any BSOD issues you have. Ultimately though if you could the little utility "hwids" (there's a link to it in BTS's signature) once you install the Dell drivers and get the card working right, he could add the hwid for it to the DP. I'm guessing this is a SoundMax adapter?

I only ask since you didn't mention it (but you were thorough).. is File and Printer Sharing enabled in the NIC properties on the XP box?