BazookaJoe

Thank you for the idea I hope you like what it produces now. It also GSM and not GSH I appreciate the significant effort you've put into this tool, but maybe I could ask for a bit more? Let me explain. I am developing a hardware agnostic image for use in the corp environment. We have a lot of different flavors of hardware, and it would be very useful to have a script like this that could be executed from cmdlines / guirunonce during minisetup or first boot to autodetect the PC Manufacturer, model, serial #, & BIOS rev level, and then output it to winnt/system32 to overwrite the default oeminfo.ini file. I'd like to be able to do this with no manual interaction. Perhaps you could modularize your script so that users could invoke only the parts of the script that they need? That way, I could get what I'm asking for, omit the extraneous stuff i'm not interested in, and i'd think this would make it easier for you add / remove functionality to your script without having to do major code revisions? I'd do this myself, but my scripting skills are remedial at best. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Hello, I'm looking to integrate the corporately approved patches contained on our WSUS servers into our distribution point & future builds. Is there a way to do this with nLite directly, or through some other means? I'd think it'd be a fairly simple matter of changing the WU pointer from MS's WU to the WSUS server, but I have no idea if that's possible under the current implementation of nLite or associated tools. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I've been wondering if anyone knows a way to reload a PC without using a CD or floppy? What i'd like to do is set up my PCs with boot menu or partition that can be called up at POST using a function key, then launches a very simple routine (something like Bart's boot disk, a simple command line w/ network support) allowing me to reload my PC with an image from a data repository on my network without using a boot CD or floppy. Any thoughts on how to do this?

Recieved this solution from a fellow MSFN member: @echo off FOR %%D IN (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 %%D:\WIN51IP SET CDROM=%%D: FOR /f %%f in ('dir/b/s %CDROM%\Hotfixes\Type1\*.exe') DO Start /wait "" "%%f" /z /n /o /q Seems to work well on XP; I have it setup to run from a bat file invoked in cmdlines.txt, using approved patches copied from my SUS server to my distro point. I still don't trust the logic of the hotfixes, and I am hoping they are smart enough not step on each other, otherwise I will have to create some sort of matrix to keep track of the incongruities. This solution doesn't quite give me what I originally wanted (dynamically slipstreaming all approved SUS hotfixes prior to GUI initialization), but it's a somewhat acceptable alternative. I wait until all the install files have been copied down during the text mode part of XP setup, then unplug it from the network before it boots up into the GUI for the first time. This way the patches get applies, and the PC isn't vulnerable to being infected before the patches are applied. Any ideas for process improvement are welcome!

It appears that the RASOR utility does some of what I need, but before creating a new topic, I thought I'd air what i'm trying to accomplish, and get some feedback on how to best accomplish it, then decide whether a new topic is needed or not. I am responsible for developing a process to automate the creation of PC images in a heterogeneous corporate environment (no less than 50 different hardware configurations in our environment, including different brands of laptops, desktops, and workstations). Mass storage drivers (MSD's) are a major problem, both during the image building process and afterwards. They are a problem during the image build process because w/o the correct MSD, the HDD is not accessible, thus preventing the build process from continuing. They are also a problem after the images are built as well, because if the MSD issue were resolved, we'd probably be able to reduce the number of base images that we need to make and maintain. And since we are a global company whose sites don't follow standards to the letter anyway (not to mention acquisitions, divestitures, etc), we have a LOT of hardware variability at our sites, so whatever solution I end up engineering needs to deal with those "unknowables" as completely as possible. Currently, we have a separate image for every standard PC type in our environment (built according to a specific inhouse procedure). I don't think that's necessary. but since I am fairly new to the image building process, I could use some ideas on how to proceed. especially since I also need to provide guidance to our site admins so they can perform this new process independantly with minimal guidance. Needless to say, this is a daunting task for a newbie, especially when i've also been given no budget to outsource this, and the ownness is all mine. But, based on the invaluable info here at MSDN, I also think it's doable. From what i've read, I think I should be able to get XP to load on any PC type, as long as the correct MSD's exist on the distro point and are referenced in the unattend.txt. I also think I can reduce the number of images in production by adding the -factory option to sysprep, enabling me to create a generic image which will work on all desktops and laptops, and correctly detect the boot device hardware (SATA, SCSI, IDE, etc). From there, I can simply .bat out the remaining configurations for application and specific configs, i'm not too worried about that. But I do want to make sure that I get the baseline config right, and develop it in a way that makes it as generic as possible, so it will work on widest variety of PCs possible. I realize I am leaving out a lot of details here, but I am doing that intentionally so I don't skew the discussion of a solution. I'd also like to do all of this using Microsoft's Business Desktop Development Accelerator as the vehicle, if possible. For those of you who haven't seen the most recent version, it's definitely worth a look, as it mirrors alot of the work being done here at MSFN ..... and it is also FREE. (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/bddoverview.mspx) Thanks in advance for reading, sorry for the length .......

Hi, I was wondering if anyone's successfully automated the installation of CutePDF and Ghostscript? This appears to be the best free PDF creator option out there (no spyware, popups, etc), but alternate suggestions are always welcome...

Does anyone know anything about unattended installations of : 1) Oracle Client, v9; 2) MatrixOne eMatrix 9.5; 3) EDS Visview 4.1? Not been able to find much on these apps, hope sopmeone out there might be able to help. Thanks!

Does anyone know of a way to slipstream authorized updates from an intranet SUS server prior to minisetup initialization? I'm not a scripting genius (a noob, actually), but it seems as if there should be a way to grab the approved updates downloaded to my SUS server, and apply them dynamically to new PC builds prior to entering the GUI. Anyone have any idea how this could be done?