RogueSpear

I think that by default, when you use Window's built-in search function, you can optionally have it search the internet.. ala MSN search. There's an option in nLite to disable this and I've been using for as long as I can remember now, but who knows my computer could be making that connection as well.

If you do a search in the Application Installs forum using the search phrase "AdminStudio", a tutorial I wrote quite some time ago should be in the top 10 or 20 of the search results. It's a guide on using AdminStudio to repack applications into an .msi file. It isn't the most complete guide, but it will certainly get you headed in the right direction. Regarding the debate of svcpack vs. RunOnceEx, I always try to get an application to install from svcpack and only resort to RunOnceEx if absolutely must. For someone to say it's rubbish only shows they really don't know what they're talking about. In the end it is a matter of personal preference and there is no factual basis to claim that RunOnceEx, or anything else for that matter, is superior.

Ok, knowing that you have multiple static IPs assigned to you makes all the difference in the world. I had ASSumed that you were only provisioned one Providing that you are using an unmanaged (or dumb) switch - your typical consumer level switch - then it should make no difference whether or not you use it. I still contend that you should configure a default gateway on all possible interfaces and hopefully this will make a difference for you. Give the internal interface of your server a default gateway of the WRT54. Give the WRT54 a default gateway of the routers internal address. Personally, I would use the WRT54 as a DHCP server for your clients since it's on the same subnet. I don't know for certain that Linksys products will forward DHCP traffic (broadcast) between subnets. And even if it does, it's totally unnecessary. You can still configure it to assign DNS server assignments to your server. I don't know if I mentioned this in a previous post or not, but I've experienced difficulties when a default gateway is not assigned where one would normally be expected. Even if you feel as though it's not necessary, like traffic should never need to flow in that path, it definately makes a difference. Remember, you're dealing with all kinds of different vendor equipment here between server, router, NICs and so on. Not all networking hardware manufacturers are equal in the way they do things. So I always make it a practice to dot all my I's cross all my T's.

Update - 20060825 Updated Desktop Sidebar to V1.05 Build 116 Updated Wireshark to V0.99.3

I haven't tried either of these so I really can't say if they'll work, but you could try double quotes or substitute the inner quotes with an apostrophe ('). A solution that I know will work is to create a .cmd file with your command line in it and call that instead.

You pretty much have two choices if you want to install software before a user login is possible without using GPO. Those would be svcpack.inf and cmdlines.txt. Unlike group policy they are only available during the initial operating system installation. RunOnceEx can be used in conjuction with an OS install or used a month after the computer has been installed. But it runs after a user login. If you click on the link toward the top of the page for "Unattended Guide", there are explanations of each in there.

If your server is consuming the IP address allocated to you by your ISP, then your other clients shouldn't have internet access. Now this is just a suggestion, but I wouldn't have my server naked facing the internet. I would hook up the server to the WRT54G, assign it a static IP, and then create some port forwarding rules if you're doing something like hosting a web site. The way it is now, one of two things is going on. Either what I described above, the server is consuming the IP from your provider, or you have it assigned a 192.168.x.x address on both NICs. If it's the latter, then it would seem as though you have a circular route problem since the server is hooked into more than one demarcation point but both interfaces are part of the same subnet. You should be able to get rid of the 10/100 switch unless you need it for physically reaching someplace in your house.

It's possible, but I haven't received any feedback specifically regarding non-English installs. I can tell you it's been downloaded from all corners of the world.

After more than 10,000 downloads this is the first report I've had of my .NET installers not functioning properly.

It would not surprise me that you're not losing your RDP connection. RDP seems to have become far more tolerant of crappy connections over the years. On the other hand, the offline files feature seems to spring to life at the drop of a hat for me sometimes. But back to the topic.. you should have a default gateway set for every interface. I'm still a little confused regarding your topology however. I guess I'm one of those types who needs the pretty illustrations to get it

Whatever works.

If you want to run a script on the PC locally and need elevated privledges, you can also assign the script to run as a startup script in group policy. The script will execute before the user is presented with a logon prompt and actually doesn't run as a traditional user, but using the local system account. I've been doing it this way for years and it works perfectly.

Try to reconcile your DHCP scopes. Also you may want to try logging in on the RIS client with a different user account when you begin the RIS install. I've seen it before where for some reason a user account gets temporarily locked out of initiating a RIS install until another accounts does one.

DameWare NT Utilities offers far more than remote control functions. I've been using it for about 5 years now and honestly couldn't imagine being without it. I don't know how many computers you are supporting but if it's in the ballpark of a couple dozen, I'd take another look at what DameWare is capable of.

The term "gateway" as I have always understood it, means the address that traffic is sent to when it is determined that the traffic is not going to another host on the local network. You need three basic things for IP connectivity - an IP address, a subnet mask, and a default gateway. That's the in-a-nutshell explanation of it. Anything that would be much more in depth than that could easily take up pages and get complex rather quickly. If you truly have an interest in the fundamentals of IP then I would suggest checking out the following site: http://www.learntosubnet.com With Adelphia, and I would assume it will be the same with Time Warner, you must have your Internet facing interface set to use DHCP. Static IP addresses are not available for home accounts, though they may be for commercial accounts. Your router will have two primary "interfaces", not to be confused with the one or more RJ-45 ports for clients to connect into. One interface is the Internet facing interface and this will be set to a legal IP address. The inside interface will likely be set to the default of 192.168.1.1 as most manufacturers use this. The 192.168.x.x range is known as private. It is not routeable through the Internet. The 192.168.1.1 is going to be the "default gateway" for your computers that are connected to the router. Network Address Translation (NAT) is what allows you to have multiple computers sharing the one single IP address assigned to your router's Internet facing interface. If you were able to make sense of all that, or even care for that matter, and still have more questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them.

For admin type scripts, I primarily use VBscript, but I also throw in a little AutoIt as well. You can use WMI with VB.NET though I find it to be more difficult than with VBscript and the functionality provided by ADSI is really built right into .NET 2.0 anyway. Monad is fine, but it sure does take a little getting used to. Personally, I'm waiting for it to go final and then see what sort of complications others run into. Staying ahead of the technology curve sounds great in theory, but I prefer to stick with tried and true in a production environment. If you happen to manage an Exchange 2003 server or plan on deploying Exchange 2007, Monad is practically mandatory for the good admin.

I really haven't had any difficulties with Vonage that would require customer service. The phone number transfer process took a good four weeks, but other than that no problems. I'm just a bit annoyed that can't offer ACR when seemingly every other VoIP provider does. @videobruce, not too far away.. in Amherst here

It's the deal where you have to dial *82 if you want to call someone who has ACR turned on. I had this with Verizon for so many years that all of my family either have it programmed into speed dial or they still dial it out of habit. It greatly cut down on the bs calls I got. Some businesses are able to bypass it due to the kind of phone systems they have, but when I had ACR and saw an anonymous call come in I knew it was worthless and just didn't answer. I'm the kind of person who believes the phone should be used only for personal calls or business calls that you initiate. The only possible exception would be something along the lines of your doctor calling to confirm an appointment or the car dealership calling to tell you your car is ready. I just cannot stand it that people I do business with feel they can call me to try and sell me more stuff. I found out about Lingo on the Vonage forums of all places. Vonage claims they can't provide the service and that they have no plans to provide it in the future. Fine then. I'll go with someone who is cheaper and does offer the service.

One major problem with Vonage anyway is that there is no anonymous caller rejection. How idiotic is that? So I've started to research alternatives. One provider, Lingo, is cheaper than Vonage and offers anonymous caller rejection. I don't know if they offer a local phone number assignment for your area, but you may want to check them out. Anyone here have experience with or have heard feedback about this provider?

VB or C#.. not much difference during runtime. You know, that funny little thing called the CLR.

While I certainly can appreciate all of the time saving aspects to programming under .NET 2.0, it sure does make for some really fat and slow code. I started programming back in the 80's and only got back into it starting with VBscript/JScript and more recently, using VB2005 to make AutoImage. Developing in a managed environment certainly is easier, but ****.. AutoImage shows as using 23MB in Task Manager. There is simply no excuse for that at all. The same with nLite. And I noticed with both of those applications, it takes a good long while for both of them to load on a fairly up to date PC. I may be on the lookout for a good old fashioned C++ environment before too long. It may be more time consuming to develop utilities, but at least they'll be a little lighter on their feet.

Update - 20060813 Updated QuickTime Alternative to V1.74 Updated TaskSwitchXP to V2.0.11 @NeoDeath, it's never been an issue for me before and I've yet to here from one person that it hasn't worked for them because of it. It's possible there could be issues if you're initiating setup from DOS, but I've never tried before so I couldn't say for sure. The filenames are not listed in txtsetup.sif or dosnet.inf, so there may not be any problems. @All, there is no need to make a post regarding updates. I'm aware of when everything posted here gets updated. There are many factors that go into when I decide to update an installer. As you may or may not know, I have a lot of other things going on other than these installers. Also I am in the process of creating WPI Addons for most of the titles listed here and creating single thread per title posts over at my forums.

@nuhi, I've found that line is not always present in EULA.txt for MCE. I don't know for certain if it has to do with the sales channel or not, but it doesn't seem to be 100%. I planned on using it as only part of detection as MCE. Hopefully a combination of criteria would be more accurate.

I tried to suppress the update checker from creating those reg entries many versions ago and had no success with it. It must somehow be built in. But one would think that when the user explicitly sets the setting as documented by Sun that it would respect the setting. This is one reason why I place Java as only a single step above spyware. You'd think if they were going to make a runtime environment that is so prone to crashing and so slow that they would at least try to not annoy people with silly things like that. EDIT: If anybody had any ideas on presetting some things like disable SSL2 and enable TLS, I'm all ears.

Update - 20060811 Updated ieSpell to V2.4.0 Build 428 Updated J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 to Update 8 Updated RogueSpear's Runtimes Installer to V1.3