jbjones

Since they claim this can't be slipstreamed, I wonder when the integrated ISO will be available.

I was just thinking, now that all these applications are out and in sync with Vista (Ie7, WMP 11, .NET 1-2-3, DirectX 9, and Live Messenger), I would love to see an all-in-one or step by step tutorial on integrating it all into XP SP2. Perhaps also a summary of applying hotfixes along with everything. Sometimes it get's confusing with all these instructions spread out around everywhere and knowing what order things should run in the runonce files or the svcpack files. Any of you geniuses out there who have succesfuly set up all of these in an unattended want to give it a go?

I was wondering if anyone has created a tutorial on how to make an unnattended installer for VirtualDub. They never seem to give you one from the official site.

I started with Nero 5.5 and then moved to Nero 6. However, I have also been disapointed at the continuous crap Nero keeps adding to their nice burning application. The worst part being that it installs everything and creates a bunch of unwanted file associations. I even wrote Nero a complaint about that to which they responded that come customers liked the extra features so it would be unfair to them to remove them. Yeah right! I have yet to meet someone who uses the Nero media apps. Seems to me that 90% ("most") of their customers buy Nero for the burning. Some stupid marketing decision going on somewhere up there. In fact that reminds me of a recent article from John C. Dvorak on Creeping Featurism. Smart guy. I never cease to be amused by his articles. Anyway. I guess from now on I'll be going for the free simple apps like CDBurnerXP Pro.

My question is, where do we find the version level of the download to know if we need to update. I can't find a version history anywhere on Yahoo's site. Craziness.

Does anyone know what the MSM file types are from the Macromedia download area on licensed flash and macromedia installers? There are MSI files and MSM files. The Flash MSI files are considerably larger and the MSM doesn't seem to be associated with any launcher for Windows. JBJones

I'm still having trouble getting the installer to ignore the screen resolution which seems to stay at 800x600. 1024 is one of the minimum requirements so it just kicks out of the installer after politely informing me of the reason. Is staying at 800x600 problem with VMware or do I hae something wrong with my Unattended Windows? I can't seem to get it to go to 1024x768 on it's own. JBJones

Well, I haven't played with it much since it's still in beta. But I sure am glad they are using a decent installer now. Now if we can just get Adobe onboard. JBJones

Anyone experimented with the new install engine for OpenOffice 2? I'm curioius how it is going to work with silent installs. The version 1 engine was aweful.

Another new quirk. With CS2 I haven't even made it to the upgrade check. The install program insists on having the display at 1024x768 by 16bit. Is this possible to set during the RunOnce installation period? I'm testing on VMware so I don't know if it's just VMware or a limitation of the Windows install. In the later case is there any way to get CS2 to ignore the minumum specs that it wants?

Has anyone out there had any experience or success with getting an Adobe upgrade product to do a silent or unattended install? I haven't been able to figure out how to handle the searching for a previous version. Is there a way to postpone the search untill the program launch, or maybe a way to point the install program to another folder of the older program on the same install disc? I once figured out the necessary files for upgrading Photoshop 6 to version 7, but I could never get it to run unnatended. I had to manually tell the installer to search a specific folder. Any ideas?

According to the Adobe web site this is the techique needed to silently install the Adobe Creative Suite v2. http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331297.html I don't know if this will work with standard retail versions (my upgrade package is in the mail as we speak), but hopefuly someone can find some use out of this. JBJones ................................................................................. Run a silent installation of Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 What's covered Create an installer XML file Run a silent installation When you purchase a volume license for Adobe Creative Suite 2.0, Adobe provides an option that allows you to run a silent installation (that is, an installation with preselected options and no interface) on Windows or Mac OS X. In a silent installation, a custom installer runs the installers for each product in the suite by using command-line installation tools built into the operating system. To run a silent installation, you must create an XML file (or script) for the custom installer. Create an installer XML file The Adobe Creative Suite custom installer is driven by information provided in an XML file. This XML file describes the products you are installing, the location to which you are installing the products, and their serialization information. To create an XML file for a silent installation: 1. Using a text editor (for example, Notepad or TextEdit ), copy and paste the following text into a new, plain text document: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <AdobeInstallerConfiguration version="1.0"> <InstallerInfo platform="win" silentMode="1" targetVolume="C:\" targetPath="Program Files\Adobe\" /> <InstallerInfo platform="mac" targetVolume="/" /> <ProductInfo serial="0000-0000-0000-0000-0000-0000" licensedUserName="Adobe User" licensedUserCompany="Adobe Systems, Inc." /> <Manifest> <Product name="Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe ImageReady CS2" selected="1" /> <Product name="Adobe Illustrator CS2" selected="1" /> <Product name="Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional" selected="1" /> <Product name="Adobe GoLive CS2" selected="1" /> <Product name="Adobe Version Cue CS2" selected="1" /> <Product name="Adobe InDesign CS2" selected="1" /> </Manifest> </AdobeInstallerConfiguration> 2. Edit the text by replacing the information in quotation marks with the information you need to customize your installation. Type the user name, company name, and serial number. Edit the installation path if it's different than the default: C:/Program Files/Adobe (Windows) and /Applications (Mac OS X). For each line that lists a product name, leave the value set to "1" if you want to install it; change the value to "0" (zero) if you don't want to install it. Note: Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional and Adobe GoLive CS2 are included only with the Premium Edition. These products won't be installed in the Standard Edition, even if the value is set to "1". 3. Save the file to the desktop, name it "AdobeInstallerConfiguration.xml" (without quotation marks), and then close it. Run a silent installation Use the following procedures to run a silent installation of Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 in Windows or Mac OS X. To run a silent installation in Windows: 1. Insert the Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 CD 1 in your CD-ROM drive. Hold down the Shift key to disable Autoplay. 2. Copy the Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 folder to the desktop. 3. Insert each of the remaining Adobe Creative Suite CDs and copy the folders for each product to the Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 folder on the desktop. 4. Move the AdobeInstallerConfiguration.xml file you created in the previous section of this document to the Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 folder. 5. Choose Start > Run. 6. In the Out box, type the following text exactly as it appears (including quotation marks, spaces, and capitalization), replacing "[user Name]" with the name of the user account that you used to log in to the computer: "C:\Documents and Settings\[user Name]\Desktop\Adobe Creative Suite 2.0\Setup.exe" - installerConfig "AdobeInstallerConfiguration.xml" 7. During the installation, "msiexec.exe" appears in the Processes tab of Windows Task Manager. If "msiexec.exe" doesn't appear, or if the installation fails, see the installer log (SuiteInstaller2.0.txt) in Documents and Settings/ [user Name] /Local Settings to determine the cause of the problem.

I figured out the problem. It's actually a documentation problem. The manual was saying I needed to enable SATA/RAID in the Advanced settings area, but the only option showing was Hard Drive. So I figured that had to be what they were talking about. I finally figured out that when the RAID is completely disabled then new menus appear. But anyway, completely disabling the RAID seemed to allow it to boot to the single drives. Is it not possible to use half as single drives and half as a RAID drive with these controlers? I had hopped to eventually add more drives for my secondary and create a RAID. But I don't know how that would work with a single boot drive. JBJones

This is brand new hardware by the way. I don't know for sure that I the BIOS is set right. However I've been searching through every setting and can't find anything that would tell it to boot one way or the other using the SATA. I just tried an older 32 bit WinXP. It does the same thing. Course that doesn't rule out any driver problems. But still. JBJones

I'm having a little trouble with my install. Has anyone seen this or have any ideas of the cause? I have a Giga-Byte GA-K8NXP-SLI with a Western Digital 80GB SATA system drive plugged into the nVidia SATA port 1 and a 250GB plugged into the nVidia SATA 2. During the install it shows both of my drives which Windows setup partitioned and formated. After the files are transfered to the hard drive the system reboots. Just like a normal 32-bit WinXP install. The problem I'm having is that the computer is rebooting into the original setup routine every time. It asks to reformat or delete the files from the previous installation each time, so I know the data is being transfered. Even if I remove the CD as the computer reboots it just sits there looking for the CD. It's like the hard drives are not bootable or something. I don't think it's a driver problem because setup was able to see the drives to perform the format and appeares to work flawlessly up to the point of the first reboot. Any ideas? JBJones

What is the best way of integrating this driver into the CD for automatic instalation? Or can it be done given that it's a BETA driver? I tried to look through the mess of posts below and couldn't come to a definite conclusion. JBJones

Start the exe installer and then check your windows temp folder for a newly extracted folder with the bootstrap.exe and MsnMsgs.msi files. My temp folder is located ... C:\Documents and Settings\jbjones\Local Settings\Temp By the way. Anyone know what the bootstrap file is? Is it needed for installation? I've always put it on my disc, but if it's not needed it would save a little extra space. JBJones

I was wondering if it is possible to recalibrate the progress bar that shows the files being copied from the CD to the hard drive in the DOS style setup program. What I get now appears to be a progress bar that runs untill the standard Windows files are copied then it disappears while the extra personal programs are copied over. I assume there must be a setting that tells setup how much data is going to be transfered so it can set the percentage scale. Has anyone explored this? JBJones

Well, according to the author, to do a unnatended install you have to purchase his "Custom Edition" for designing a branded distribution or some such craziness for like $300. (like that's going to happen for those of us who just like to play) It would be nice however if anyone has figured out a repackaged version with both Ghost Script 8 and Cute PDF. - Jeff

Anyone solved this problem of pressing [next]? I just wanted to chime in that I'm having the problem too with 4.7 JBJones

So. Best apps period (for Windows) Firewall: (not sure ... use hardware) Anti-Virus: Avast! AntiVirus Email: Outlook 2003 FTP: SmartFTP CD/DVD Utilities: Nero 6 Ultra Edition Archives: WinZip General Office Apps: Microsoft Office 2003 Graphics: Photoshop Drawing: Illustrator Page Layout: InDesign PDF Printer: CutePDF Writer (equal to or better than Adobe's method) Web Design: Dreamweaver MX 2004 Video Editor: Sony Vegas (offline) DVD Authoring: Sonic Scenarist (... but I use Sony DVD Architect for Vegas compatibility and price) 3D app: Maxon Cinema 4D R9 / Maya (depending on need) Not necesarily the best of the best. But the best of the free/cheap category. General Office Apps: OpenOffice.org Graphics: GIMP.org Email: Outlook Express

Or if you are using a DVD install disc and have plenty of room you could unpack the install file and then use these two lines in your RunOnceEx.cmd file. REG ADD %KEY%\140 /VE /D "OpenOffice 1.1.3" /f REG ADD %KEY%\140 /V 1 /D "%systemdrive%\Install\Applications\OOo\setup.exe -r "%systemdrive%\Install\Applications\OOo\response.txt"" /f Then I put this information into the response.txt and dropped it into the same folder. Seems to work on my end with the exception of not putting icons into the all user account. JBJones

I wrote Maxon about installing Cinema 4D silently and automaticly. They wrote back saying it wasn't possible. Are they just blowing smoke or is it true? Has anyone learned anything different on the subject? JBJones

So, I've been looking around the web and haven't been sucessful in figuring out if there is a way to automaticly install Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.1 and then add in extra fonts in their coresponding groups. I don't really want 1,000 fonts automaticly activated and in the same group. Anyone else have any clues on how this might work? Or if it's even possible? JBJones

This should be a good problem to try solving. Is it possible to do an unattended install with Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.1 and install three sets of fonts already categorized? JBJones