RogueSpear

I am wondering if anybody has any ideas on automating this or if there is in fact a registry entry for disabling DEP. One of the applications I am trying to integrate into my install routine is the newest version of the Symantec Client Firewall Administrator. It's an .msi install routine, easy enough I thought, but it halts towards the end of the install. The funny part is that the app is in fact installed properly. Actually I should clarify this, from a command line using /QB I get the following results. Using WMI via VBscript to install totally silent, it silently fails. But I know it's because of DEP. Edit: Ok I found this article at Microsoft's Knowledgebase A detailed description of the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2 It appears that DEP can only be configured through the boot.ini file. And rather than /NoExecute=OptIn it looks like you should have /NoExecute=AlwaysOff. The OptIn setting is actually the default setting. It also appears that you can apply a fix to individual applications via the Application Compatibility Toolkit. This is beginning to sound like too much work.

With my RIS setups the ComputerName field has %MACHINENAME% for it's entry value. It has me wondering if you could use a method similar to Pyron's Driver method. That is using a fake setup.exe in order to run a batch file ahead of the genuine setup.exe. For instance Dell has a DOS utility for setting and reading the Dell asset tag from the BIOS. My theory is that if you can set the environment variable %MACHINENAME% to that asset tag, you'd be all set. Another possibility would be some DOS utility that has the ability to read BIOS strings. I suppose the main requirement would be that the utility be able to pass values. A totally different method I was thinking about, but had not yet tried is to make a seperate WINNT.SIF for each computer. Make a seperate i386 directory for each computer and use a multiboot app (EZBoot) to generate a menu. Using the Optimize feature of UltraISO, all of the files in i386 except for WINNT.SIF would be identical and thus only recorded one time. Any thoughts or comments?

As far as the Cisco VPN Client goes, I prefer to use the msi installer version, but I imagine the Installshield version would work just fine with an iss file. The only real limitation to a silent install (either version) is that you cannot install it over the wire. So this eliminates GPO deployment right off the bat. If you have a custom profile file for the client just make sure it is in the root of your install source and it will get copied over. For all of the different options, you can find the Administrator's and the User's Guides in the same area that you download the client from Cisco. It's all pretty straight forward and the newest version 4.6.xx family has an autoupdate feature which is nice due to the lack of GPO support.

I've noticed some anomalies with the EOF character. It would appear, in my case anyway, the it is required to have at least one CR before and at least one CR after. Also when I make changes to my ISO and then save the ISO, something happens to that file everytime. I have to go back and insert the txtfiles.sif again, overwriting the one in the ISO, then save, then I'm all set. I don't know if this is some kind of bug in UltraISO or not. But its all rather annoying.

No, if you just eliminate the entry in your WINNT.sif file Windows will not look in that directory and process the inf file. There must be something about that inf file for the RealTek drivers that's conflicting with the SoundMAX chip.

Here is an mst file I made a while back and I've never had an issue with rebooting or otherwise. JRE50.7z

It will ask you during the GUI portion of the setup. Another solution, although this could be time consuming depending on how many PCs, is to make a script that renames the computer after setup (say during RunOnceEx) based on the MAC address. I've done this for one client so far and it worked out ok. What you should do is make sure that all of your computers rename no matter what with this method so that you don't have any with the same name by mistake.

@BTS Just let me know if you want me to run a test of the new drivers. My particular mobo is an Intel (I forget the numbers but it was the one CrasherFox mentioned). Maybe others could test with Asus and Sony's.

This is one of the main features of AutoIt (freeware). Take a peek at the AutoIt Scripts sticky thread.

There's a lot of stuff you can't do at T-13, including anything having to do with WMI. I've had to come up with some work-arounds in my vbs script I run from cmdlines.txt after discovering this.

@Lucius Snow What sound adapter is in that Sony?

I could be totally off base here, but is this happening on a slow computer? I've seen it before where XP is set to automatically adjust visual effects. I have about 8 old Gateways (Pentium 233MMX, 256MB RAM) at work. They just won't die so I use em, but I set the visual effects to best performance mode to speed them up. Maybe this reg setting is doing it?

What client? I can help you out with Cisco VPN installations.

I mentioned this a while back, but just in case anyone missed it... decompress Ryan's pack and look at the files contained within. It takes a little bit of back and forth between different files at first to understand what's going on, but I think there's a fair amount of people here with the expertise to be able to comprehend it all. It's an excellent source of learning as far as I'm concerned. It's also a good example of EXCELLENT documentation. The biggies out there (MS, Symantec, etc.) could learn a thing or two about documenting files from this. Actually MS isn't all that bad at documenting, it's there organization of it and the sheer volume that makes it a pain. Personally, I learned an aweful lot about the XP/2K setup process just from this upgrade pack. Don't look for quick answers. Get out there and learn!

That's correct.

The culprit is \S\R. Remarkably \S\R\HD, \S\SM\A, and \S\SM\I all work just fine. I tested all of the other directories too. It really is curious why the RealTek ACM97 drivers' presence alone would foul up a mobo with a SoundMAX chipset so much that it blue screens during install. Well unless there are some newer (or older) RealTek drivers out there that avoid this issue, I personally will have to leave them out of my unattended installs, whether by media or RIS (it screws up both). I hope this helps some. When I come back to work on Friday, I'm going to try and change those couple of BIOS settings I mentioned earlier and put back in the RealTek drivers. I just have to satisfy my curiosity. I'd do it today, but the Chairman of the Board (my wife) is going to kill me if I don't get home soon.

OK, I tried disabling USB Legacy Support in the BIOS as this has caused various problems for me in the past, but it didn't help this one. I tried some older drivers too, no dice. I just tried BTS's suggestion of removing the SM directories and drivers, but still got the same result. EDIT: I now removed the entire Sound DriverPack and will know in a few minutes if that did anything. My next few steps, one-by-one, will be to disable various options in the BIOS; ASF Support (not sure what that is), change PnP OS to "no", enable "ISA Legacy Bit". I'll report back if any of these makes the difference. EDIT 2: Well removing the entire Sound DriverPack seemed to do the trick. I suppose what has me a little baffled is why removing just the SM drivers did not resolve the issue. I suppose I will try to add one directory at a time to see which one seems to be the offender.

Actually there is a Run, RunOnce, RunServices, and RunSericesOnce for HKCU. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce You can apply a Run or a RunOnce to the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\SmallIcons] "SmallIcons"=dword:00000001 ; Use small icons This can also be set to a string value of "yes". Either one works. The problem I have is that I cannot seem to get this one to stick unless it is applied after the user is fully logged in. I've tried hardcoding it in the hive file, applying it from cmdlines.txt, during RunOnceEx, everything; it just doesn't seem to want to take unless the user has been created and logged in at least once. Anybody able to provide some insight about this?

I have the same Intel mobo as CrasherFox and unfortunately am experiencing this issue also. Updated the BIOS to the latest rev issued on Oct 1 2004.

Microsoft Press has a newer book called something like "The Windows XP Registry Guide". For an MS Press book, it's actually pretty good. Unfortunately it's not as in depth as I'd like it to be as far as different keys and values, but on a positive note it does have some information that you might otherwise not even think about. It describes how to make your own .adm files which is fantastic for the network admin of an AD domain. And it does go into many of the methods of distributing changes via registry tweaks. You can usually find it for about half price (new) over at bookpool.com.

This is an example of getting the Pnp ID for a Matrox G400 DH: Dim strComputer, objWMIService, propValue, SWBemlocator, colItems strComputer = "." Set SWBemlocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator") Set objWMIService = SWBemlocator.ConnectServer(strComputer,"\root\CIMV2",UserName,Password) Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_VideoController",,48) For Each objItem in colItems WScript.Echo "PNPDeviceID: " & objItem.PNPDeviceID Next You can create string variables for UserName and Password if you want to run this against a remote machine. And if you did want to do that, you would replace the strComputer = "." with strComputer = "Hostname".

Revisiting an old issue. With the original method (post #1) I was seeing HighMAT listed in Windows Update. With this newer method, I am not. I think EvilVoice was curious about this. For the life of me though, I can't figure out why the original method would have caused that to happen.

@GM, another thing is that I seem to have a lot of difficulties with batch compared with VB. I used to use batch exclusively years back, and I never did take to some of the more complicated things. So I started to fiddle with Kix, which is very nice BTW if you want to disable WSH for security purposes, and I eventually settled on VBscript. Also, that was nice tight code; only one line. I always like the simple, yet effective solutions to a problem. One last thing. Have you looked at the batch files in BTS's Driver Packs? Made me go Felt almost like I never wrote a line in my life. Good stuff.

In my experience, it's rarely that simple. There are an aweful lot of gotchas involved at least 80% of the time. Also on the topic, I have done quite a bit of direct msi editing when making an mst just doesn't do it (Daemon Tools for example).