Atari800XL

Thank you ChrisR (and all contributors), the best PE project just got even better...

Wow, almost three weeks without traffic. I guess WinNTSetup has reached the point where it is 100% perfect, and so easy to use that there are no further questions or criticisms. Congratulations, JFX! Maybe it's like Windows XP, I've heard it will only need a few more updates before it will be perfect as well! (sorry, didn't mean to compare these two, just kidding).

WinNTSetup and Bootice, is there anything they can't do? (Tried my first Bootice multi-partition USB stick today, nice to have a small partition on my large USB to put those Grub4dos-loaded PE isos, which can't be fragmented of course. Now I only have to empty/ format that small partition when there are new versions, and can leave the large OS isos on another partition, ready for install with WinNTSetup.)

JFX (or xcv150, who brought up GPT ESP partitions), I was interested in JFX's example of creating an EFI system partition with Bootice. In your example above, it looks like you're creating an NTFS partition of 10gb, while "create ESP" and "create MSR" are both selected. As I don't have a GPT disk to test on, please could you explain how this is done? Does Bootice "subtract" some mb's from the single NTFS partition to create those two partitions, or are there more screens after this one where you select those sizes? I *have* done some rescue/ repair work on newer laptops (using W8PESEx64, on secureboot systems), but no reinstalls yet, so I was wondering how to go about it if the situation would present itself. Right now on MBR disks, I never use the "extra" partitions (seperate boot/msr/recovery), so I would imagine on GPT, I would only create the Fat32-ESP and use the rest for normal partitions. As Bootice can be nicely "integrated" into WinNTSetup, this would seem like a great (and simple) setup. I was just wondering if this way of thinking is correct, any comments are very welcome.

Sounds good. So to be clear: esd files are compressed better, but take longer to apply? If that's the case, I'm not sure I would like them for normal use (I like faster apply better than smaller size, but I'm sure it could be useful for some). Those LSMS compressed wim files are created by using "/compress:recovery" with DISM? That's how I understood it, but it really doesn't make sense... ("/compress:lsms" or something would be clearer, but that's Microsoft for ya...)

JFX, thank you for clarifying that!

Nope, didn't notice that I could click Oem and Runafter... I think it's because I use the keyboard as much as I can (together with Autohotkey shotcut keys, etc). So it turns out the file selector was there already. Brilliant, thanks!!! About WinPESE: I'm sure you will help out again when it's needed... (?) Anyway: I'm sure you know what I meant: Your (nick-)name pops up all over the place, that why I mentioned it. Bottomline is: You are good guy... (now take the compliment, please!)

Nice!! Didn't even think about the proceed page, this is a nice compromise (as I said, I know you don't like to change the UI). I'm testing right now, I open XYplorer to find my "test-copyafter.exe", use control-p to copy the filename with path and paste it into the WinNTSetup "Proceed" Runafter line. This seems to work nicely. Even better would be a tiny little file selector after the editbox, would you pleaser condider that? Maybe a tiny "..." box, like in the main GUI. (EDIT: Tested it multiple times already, working nicely, real advantage of a fileselector would be to prevent typos. Still, if you leave things as they are, I'm completey happy with it, thanks for listening!!!!) Thank you JFX, I hope you will be with "us" for many more years!!!! The more I read about this stuff (WinNTSetup, GetWAIKTools, Win81SE, etc, etc) the more I realize that you are the main force behind most of this stuff, you are one of the only people who combine programming skills, "general niceness", patience and communication skills. It's hard enough to find people with only *one* of these, but you seem to have them all.

JFX, I hope you will have a nice holiday! There's one little feature request I would like to make, I'm sure you will not read it until the next year, but I'm on a break as well right now, so I have some spare time and thought I'd mention it anyway. Here's my case: I use the "-runafter" switch all the time, mostly to test out several "$oem$ folders". Instead of using the actual $oem$ folders (which would require me to change the source folder everytime), I use a SFX that extracts the desired "Setup\Scripts" and other folders on c:\. Lately, I'm testing a lot of different variations in the Scripts folder (setupcomplete.cmd etc), so I copy different "CopySetupScripts.exe" SFX's around. I was thinking to myself that it would be very nice to have a WinNTSetup dialog/ file selector to pick different files. But I didn't want to trouble you with it, I know you like the GUI to remain just as it is. But then a minute ago, I was looking at the main GUI again, and to me it looks as if there's a perfect little spot for a file select item just below the "Unattended" and "Add drivers" boxes. So here's my formal feature request: - Is it possible to add a file select item with a checkbox below "Unattended" and "Add drivers"? It would be great for Windows setup script experiments! Thanks for listening, if you don't like my request, no problem at all, WinNTSetup is darn near perfect anyway!!! Little mockup (I changed it from 2 to 3 selectors):

I know JFX can't support every type of nlited XP source, etc. But on the other hand: it's not like WinNTSetup is particularly picky or anything. I also update my XP source (almost) every month, and (almost) never had any problems with WinNTSetup. Here's what I do: -a- Clean XPSP3 -b- Ryan integrator: Updatepack, Addon IE8 and Net35 -c- nLite: latest hotfixes, some mods (classic setupscreen ao.) -d- DPbase SATA drivers -e- Some other basic stuff (not relevant) to build a nice 700mb iso. As I said: as long as you keep everything somewhat standard, not too "weird", WinNTSetup will support it just fine. So another big thanks to JFX for providing all his wonderful tools and knowledge in 2013!! (WinNTSetup, WinPESE, GetWAIKTools). Have a nice holiday!!!

I would also like to know about .esd files. I must admit I don't know too much about them, I only know they have higher compression and can't be edited as easily as wim files can. I plan on doing some experiments on creating an .esd from a .wim, and see how much space it will save. But if you don't support them, I will not bother with it.

------ sorry -------

"/nt5" has changed to "nt5" (without the slash) in version 3. So you should use: WinNTSetup.exe nt5 /configfile:"WinNTSetup.ini"

Congratulations on 3.0 Final!!! Thanks for your continued work on this, you made installing Windows a breeze!

JFX, just to wrap this up: I saw the extra animation on some test .wim I made, maybe the one that had the "pending updates" inside (injected with DISM). However, I don't use that system anymore, I'm back to updating a "live" system, then capturing that. In the last case, I haven't seen the animation anymore, so just forget about it. We wouldn't want to hold back WinNTSetup 3.0 RTM!!

A few days ago I was going to mention that there was a "new" (unwanted) 8.1 install animation on one of my tests, even though I had the WinNTSetup option "win8noanimation" set. Then on another test there was no animation after all. I was a bit confused, so I removed that message. Now I think it might be like this: - On a 8.1 wim that has the latest updates "injected" with DISM (offline), there is a new animation (because the injected updates are "pending" updates, and are executed at install time, and the new animation is presented). - On a 8.1 wim that has the updates applied in Audit mode, the animation does not occur. Actually, applying updates in audit mode is no longer possible in 8.1, you need to update in user mode, then enter audit mode, then generalize/shutdown etc, then capture the new .wim. (The best way I found is to use autounattend.xml to create a user with admin rights, and set autologin for that user). These are my findings so far, I would be interested to know if any of the experts can confirm or deny this. WinNTSetup related: I guess there's no way for WinNTSetup to prevent the animation I mentioned. It's not very important either, because it can be prevented if you use "the other" method. [EDIT: Upon more testing with 8.1ProWMC-with a free MS key from 11/2012-, I'm not so sure anymore. Looks like there's some kind of new animation, no matter which method you use. As you might have guessed, I hate this animation, it looks so childish, reminds me of the Atari800XL "attract" screen].

Sorry, removed (need more testing).

OK jaclaz, thanks for that. I use 32bit mostly, it's just when some pesky "outsiders" come in with their new PC's and laptops, that I need to worry about 64bit stuff. It's mostly laptops lately, for those I also needed a 64bit win8PESE usb, what with Secure boot, uefi etc. On other peoples' systems, I can't fool around too much, so I need those tools in 64bit. So to have some experience I need to have some 64bit test stuff around for myself as well... But once again, to be clear on the subject: I don't mind 32bit at all, this was just about the WinNTSetup v3 warning "Your processor is not 8.1 64bit ready". To my taste, this warning can be shown when setting up either version... (besides, look at my username, if it was up to me, we would still be using 8bit Atari's)

Just now, I was installing w8.1 32bit on an older PC, and noticed the "This processor does not support w8.1 64bit" warning (in the WinNTSetup v3 "Ready?" screen).. At first, my reaction was that this warning should be removed (as it doesn't concern the 32bit install), but after a bit of thinking I guess it's actually a good warning, something like "You're about to install the 32bit version, and that's just as well, because this old piece of crap PC doesn't support 64bit anyways". So please leave the warning in (looking forward to 3.0.20131101!)

I do remember I saw 3 product keys mentioned in the list at one time (remember I asked about saving all lines in that list), but I guess that must have been on an occasion when all primary partition were visible (I'm still not 100% sure though...). Thanks for checking, I was just asking because the beta stage seems to be coming to an end. EDIT: Wait, I did this test: (1) On testlaptop: Boot from USB (Win8PESE), start WinNTSetup 3beta (latest), press ctrl-sh-o: Only product key from active partition is shown. No "Y:" or "Z:" drives are mounted (2) On "live" Windows XP on different (work) PC: p1 is hidden (w7), p2 is hidden (w8), p3 is unhidden and active: Start WinNTSetup, press ctrl-sh-o: 3 product keys are found, p1 is mounted as Y:, p2 is mounted as Z: EDIT2: OK, now this is interesting: - From XP, ctrl-sh-O shows productkeys from all primary partitions, even when they were hidden before (it mounts them as Y: and Z: in my case) - From w7 or w8, starting WinNTSetup, then pressing the key, shows only the productkey from the active partition, the one that was not hidden. This also explains why Win8PESE shows only 1 productkey.

Is it me, or has something changed in the last few versions? Before (until some time last week?), hitting ctrl-sh-0 (from Win8PESE) found all (3) Product Keys in all primary partitions (also hidden ones), but now it only shows the Product Key of the active partition of the HD. Any ideas?

Just for fun (and testing) I built a new Windows 8.1 wim a few minutes ago. I usually add NetFX3 and remove most Appx packages with DISM. Today I got the (official) update rollup ("Rollup A") which contains all updates that should have been in the RTM version in the first place (KB2894179, KB2883200, KB2894029) and added them to the wim as well. ...well, just wanted to let you know that this new .wim also installs fine with WinNTSetup v3. It shows the updated .wim as "6.3.9600.16408" (instead of the previous 16384 [edit, sorry]). Nice!

Thanks for the new version. Nice to see it's a the Beta stage now. What exactly do you mean by "supported to install a NT5 OS after a NT6 one"?

Thanks, the new and improved x64 W8.1 cpu check is great, along with the "save all productkeys"!!!

Thank you very much for the new version. Of course I already saw your message two days ago, but I wanted to wait for other reactions first. Well, there aren't any (yet). Now there must surely be (a lot?) more users of WinNTSetup, right? With every new version, I'm amazed by this wonderful tool, and of course the fact that you want to share it with us, for free! Thanks x1000 I like the new "Product keys" feature! It finds all keys on all my OS partitions. When multiple keys are found, only one is saved, is it possible change that, or to add "Save all"? The new WinNTSetup cpu check on the P4 (mentioned a few posts up) says it is W8.1x64 ready (but it's not). But never mind for now...