RogueSpear

While on the topic of creating .msi files, I thought I'd ask a question to see what sort of response there would be. I've made literally dozens of repacked .msi files for a wide range of applications using InstallShield AdminStudio. I realize that this tool may not have a huge audience here since it is a rather expensive suite. Would there be any interest here if I were to create a guide to making msi files with this tool? It would be a bit of work and I'd hate to do it if there wasn't anyone who would benefit from it.

@jdoe oops. That's what I get for copy/pasting code out of a much larger script. Thanks for the correction. @GM One thing I do right out of the gate is copy over i386 to the hard disk and then reassign that registry key. Also, was just showing a way to go about it using VBscript.

Your Dell CD is probably a special OEM build that is tied to the BIOS. They do this so that you don't need to perform an activation, but you also can't transfer the license to another machine should your Dell die. If you don't mind activation happening, but just don't want to be bothered with it, stick AutoActivate=Yes in your winnt.sif file.

I don't remember who came up with this simple and elegant, yet brilliant piece of batch: set tagfile=\WIN51 for %%i in (c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) do if exist _ "%%i:%tagfile%" set CDDRIVE=%%i: but it inspired me to come up with an equivelent in VBscript, as that is my preferred scripting environment. So here it is: Dim strTemp, Drives, Drive, strFiles strTemp = sysdrv & "\Temp" Drives = Array("C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H", "I", "J", "K", "L", "M", "N", "O", _ "P", "Q", "R", "S", "T", "U", "V", "W", "X", "Y", "Z") For Each Drive In Drives If fs.FileExists(Drive & ":\WIN51") Then strFiles = Drive & ":\EXTRAS\" Next Note that in my case the only directory I need access to on the CD/DVD is the one called "EXTRAS." Obviously you can modify to suit your own needs. The underscore and CR entered for readability only in the case of the batch code. The underscore and CR in the VBscript is for readability also, but is acceptable and functioning code.

The only way to "install" MPC that I know of is to do it as part of installing either Real Alternative or QuickTime Alternative since the latest version of MPC is included in the installs for those products. There are silent switches for them on the sticky for Application Switches. Personally I repack them both using Installshield Repackager.

I never noticed that, thanks for pointing it out. Looks like I'm going to have to look over my WillyPad converions to see what else got botched.

Here are the tweaks that I put in. I used WillyPad to convert the registry entries to inf format. [Regs.Config] HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","AcceptedPrivacyStatement",0x00010001,01,00,00,00 HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","FirstRun",0x00010001,00,00,00,00 HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","SendUserGUID",1,00 HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","SilentAcquisition",0x00010001,00,00,00,00 HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","UsageTracking",0x00010001,00,00,00,00 HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","WebScriptCommandsEnabled",0x00010001,01,00,00,00

I put these entries in my registry after it installs ; CDBurnerXP Pro - Settings [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CDBurnerXP Pro 3\DataWriter] "UseVerifyData"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CDBurnerXP Pro 3\General] "AskExit"=dword:00000000 "BackImage"=dword:00000000 "CurrentTab"=dword:00000004

Over the past month or so my Unattended project has been coming along rather well, especially since I have been borrowing from my two years experience of using RIS. Progress has been a little slower than expected, but steady enough. Well all of a sudden last night, like a kick in the teeth, it all stopped working. To be honest, I am frequently guilty of trying out too many new things at once rather than one at a time. After spending around 10 hours a day for the last month almost exclusively on this, who could blame me. First, I got the dreaded framedyn.dll error, and I'm still not sure why I did. Gradually, I kept stepping back, removing tweaks and hacks, one by one, trying to figure out where I went so wrong. Eventually, I figured out that most of the bad things going on had to do with the fact that my svcpack.inf was not being processed. It took me a while to figure this out because I do very little with svcpack.inf. All of Ryan's upgrade pack was installing, WMP10 was installing, but my self-extracting file the populates some miscellaeous files was not running. Through further investigation, I noticed that all of the files from Ryan's pack were being logged as unsigned; as were the files from WMP10. Finally that was what told me svcpack.inf was not being processed. :angrym: Here is the frustrating part: Somewhere, somehow, some process removed the following lines from my svcpack.inf BuildNumber=2600 MinorVersion=1 MajorVersion=5 Luckily I remembered seeing somewhere in these boards that you need those three little lines. I still have no idea how after a month of experimenting with nLite, Ryan's Upgrade Pack, and BTS's Driver Packs, this suddenly out of nowhere cropped up. I sincerely doubt it was any of those three packages. Moral of the story is this: I've seen a lot of posts around MSFN regarding svcpack.inf not processing. Check that file often! This is one day of my life I'll never get back.

My thought was to compare the PIDs and the keys and go from there.

@boredwithxp You seem to have a pretty good handle on available command line switches in SAV. Do you happen to know of any for ALEScan.exe that is a part of the Symantec Client Firewall (part of SCS)?

The Update_V003.cmd was not updating at all for me. It appeared to be checking your site (confirmed with Ethereal), but was not finding any updates or not recognizing the updated files on your site. So I downloaded the new BASE and it appears that the Update_V004.cmd is not working properly in that one either. Update_V004.cmd continually states that it just downloaded Update_V004.cmd and to close and use that one instead.

It's to my understanding that the key you put in must correspond to the PID which is defined in setupp.ini (yes there are two p's in the filename). Although this web page is grossly outdated and appears all but abandoned, you may find some info here that will get you on the right track. http://www.tech-hints.com/xp.html#3

Beat me to the punch! I was just going to make one of those too! On a side note: I think its strange that you can see IO.SYS, ntldr, etc in the exclusions dialog box, but not pagefile.sys. Well done on the fix! Now if we could just figure out my terminal services problem, maybe Symantec would hire us as lead engineers.

You have to click on the + symbol to expand the details. I don't remember right now, but there may not have been any changes to the firewall component of SCS.

Sorry bout that you need to add these two lines of code at the beginning of the script: Dim ws Set ws = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

WMI is just the mechanism for compressing the folders. I tried my best to select directories where I thought that performance would be impacted the least. I am by no means the foremost expert on which are or are not the most important to performance. If anyone has any suggestions for better selecting which directories to compress or not compress, I'm open for suggestions.

Wow, I really like that idea Powerhouse. I hope it gets implemented in order to make communications a little bit easier.

You can tell SAV to ignore individual files, such as pagefile.sys. I know this works because I have it ignoring a couple of files related to DameWare Mini Remote. I'll have to give this a try.

I got a hold of the change log. Goes from V9.0.0.1300 to current. Release_notes.7z

Here's a little one I made myself, so I hope it isn't a repeat. I have a terrible habit of not labeling and then losing floppy disks. The things are like potato chips nowadays. This tweak requires that you put rbfg.exe in System32. When you right click on any drive in explorer you will have an option to make a RIS Boot Disk. A start menu shortcut for this common yet menial task was just way too cumbersome for me. Hope it helps out the RIS enabled sys admins out there.

Macromedia has posted a download that is an msi file which installs both Shockwave and Flash Players, without Yahoo. Just check their download area.

Another fellow posted the same issue yesterday. No answer there either.

Just in case its worth a mention, I DO use nLite but have never experienced this dll error everyone is complaining about. Just a note though; I don't remove too terribly much using nLite.

Like I had posted earlier, this guide worked for me the first try. I did nLite (put Ryan's pack in using nLite) and then followed this guide. And I did use the inf proided here. Now that its mentioned, Windows Update does have HighMAT listed, but I dont remember if it was listed before implementing this how to.