Atari800XL

Well, a quick regshot comparison didn't turn up an easy, quick, single registry toggle (yet) to Boot To Desktop, but I'm sure something will come up soon. Other solutions could be a setting in autounattend.xml, or a WinNTSetup tweak. Then it's byebye Metro for me...

I just downloaded the Windows 8.1 preview from: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/preview-iso I booted Win8PESE, mounted the new iso, then started WinNTSetup (with all my usual tweaks and commandline options), using my normal autounattend.xml (only changed the product key). I'm glad to say everything went off without a hitch! My compliments to JFX (once again). I don't really care about any of the new Windows 8.1 features, only thing I wanted was the new (sigh..., 18 months overdue) "Boot To Desktop" option. And indeed, the bugger now can boot straight to the desktop (so, even faster than the 0.2 seconds of Metro I still saw with my previous Windows 8 using Classic Shell). I haven't tested anything else yet, just wanted to report success with WinNTSetup. Next is finding out how I can add the "Boot To Desktop" to autounattend.xml, would that be possible/ easy, you think? Or else maybe a (command-line!?) option in WinNTSetup? Maybe we could even name it Windows 7.1 then, instead of 8.1...

Woah... that was fast... Thanks, you never cease to amaze me.... Now I'm curious about what happened with the dialog box. Was there supposed to be a Easter message there? ("Happy Easter from JFX"). That would be a true Easter Egg... But my guess is, it was some kind of "flag" box for you in testing mode? Anyhow, thank you very very much, you are faster than a speeding bullet. I hope your fingers will not freeze up again soon, let's hope for a warm summer! (not too warm- mind those PC fans [pun intended]) And before I forget: YES, version 2.3.5.2 fixed the empty dialog box! In the time it took to type this message, the W8 setup on another PC has finished!

JFX, I was trying out the new 2.3.5 version, and noticed the strange message box right before "Integrating drivers". I then tried 2.3.5.1, no change. Any ideas what this could be? If I click OK, everything proceeds normally, and the setup seems to be OK. I used a new .wim file, but don't think that's it. Still, I will do more testing, first with an older .wim file, then with an older WinNTSetup version. But if you have any ideas in the meantime, please share... [EDIT: Attachment removed, not needed anymore, it was just an empty dialog box]

Thanks for the new version. I still use WinNTSetup almost every day. As an example: Today somebody gave me an Acer TravelMate 4150 (from 2004-2005) with a busted DVDRW. "I guess it's a total write-off, right?" he told me . I booted from USB (Win8PESE) (he never saw OS setup from USB before...), installed XP, W7 and W8 (all updated versions, from same USB), after two hours he had XP (which he needs for his scanner), W7 (for daily use with Office 2010), and W8 (for testing) all on 1 PC. Never saw a bigger smile!!! ("Hey, this one now boots quicker than my 2009 desktop PC!) I'd like to pass that smile on to you, JFX!!!!! (What are you planning for version 3? Could it really get better still?)

OK, I've "edited away" my previous message that was at this spot. It was about "6-Common Files.script" missing from the full download, but there has been an update to the full download, so that comment is no longer valid. I just want to thank everybody once again, and to be honest I don't understand why there aren't 100x as much "thanks" messages here. I mean, isn't Win8PESE just about the best invention since sliced bread? Or is there even a better PE solution, where everybody is hanging out? Then please tell me where that is Seriously, Win8PESE is a great tool (as is Win7PESE of cource), thanks...

I would like to particularly thank you for the fact that WinPESE8 even builds on XP (great job on the beautiful GetWAIKTools utility!!), and the resultant ISO even runs on my old HP nc6320 (512mb). Now I know that's the absolute minimum, but still, it works! And it's fast, too (it boots 20% faster than WinPESE7 on my testsystem). I have been playing with a standard WinPE4 for a little while, but I did miss the standard Explorer shell (just for the shell, because I use XYPlorer as a filemanager) and also missed the Diskmanagement GUI. Great to see they're back in WinPESE8! I was just thinking about this: It must be close to 25 years ago when I had my MSDOS floppy with a 200kb full "emergency boot" (with Q- The Quick Editor, 4Dos, etc). Now, 25 years later, we have a USB thumbdrive with a 200mb WinPESE8 "emergency boot"

ChrisR, JFX, and everybody else: Thank you very much for WinPESE8!!! I've used WinPESE7 for a while now, I use it almost every day (as a basis for JFX's brilliant WinNTSetup). These tools are just so amazingly great, I can't begin to express my respect for all your work. You're the BEST!!! I made a very basic WinPESE8, to which I add a simple script to have an autorun Autohotkey (because I like to use the keyboard as much as possible, not the mouse, when I use WinPESE on systems I need to repair/ setup), The autohotkey.ini file then has a simple "autorun"/ "runonce" part on top, where I mount my (existing) Portable.iso, which holds my favorite aps (TCCLE, Semware Editor, WinNTSetup, etc. etc.). I was actually very surprised to see that I could use my existing (WinPESE7) Portable.iso with WinPESE8 with hardly any modification! I only needed a few extra dll's, eg. msvbvm60.dll for XYPlorer (free GiveAwayOfTheDay version 11.90) and the less-obvious asycfilt.dll (XYPlorer as well). It was actually a lot of fun finding out about the new things in WinPESE8, I can hardly believe everything's working so good already! Last time I checked (december 2012) there was nothing, last week I checked again and the whole project is as good as complete!!! At least for me, there's hardly anything to wish for, only thing I would like is a way to get rid of the last two desktop icons ("Computer" and "Trash"). I use BGInfo as a way to display system info straight on the desktop at boot, along with a "cheat-sheet" with Autohotkey keyboard shortcuts, so those desktop icons are not very useful to me. But as I said, those are just tiny little things, totally unimportant to the working of the system itself. Thank you guys, you are brilliant!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks JFX. I finally ended up here in the general PE section. GetWAIKTools is another one of your geniusly perfect tools. I also built my first WinPESE8, so I'll continue thanking you there

I guess it wouldn't be a very big problem if you decided to "reduce" the possibilites to run WinNTSetup from XP, as long as using it to install XP is still possible. Speaking of which: I always run WinNTSetup from WinPE_SE, which of course you also have (had?) a lot of involvement in. Do you still recommend that as a platform (or even the best platform) for WinNTSetup? Or are there better alternatives? I did some testing with PE4.0 (just the standard Windows 8 PE, with XYPlorer as a shell and Autohotkey for running my most used utilities with a single keystroke, no real need for a normal shell with menu etc). WinPE_SE is wonderful, but there may come a time to "upgrade" the base for WinNTSetup to PE4? I have no complaints at all about WinPE_SE, it's just strange that sometimes it freezes at boot time ( I always use USB), it looks like there's a problem with some processes waiting for other processes to initialize, which ends up in a freeze. A reboot/ reset usually solves this, but it would be nice to know who is waiting for who... That's the only (tiny) blemish on this perfect system!!!!

OK, thanks for your reply, but it leaves one thing open: You mention that "driver integration for W8 was buggy when running under XP". So when you say support for XP is getting tougher, is that: (1) Running WinNTSetup from XP (which I never use, I use WinPE_SE = W7) (2) Using WinNTSetup to *install* XP ...or both?

Thanks for the new version. I can't say that I noticed any "bugs" lately, so now I wonder which bugs you fixed in the new release.... Also, are you saying that disableSFC was not working with XP setup before? So I should test XP setup again with the latest version? Sorry for asking, but it's just that the previous version was working OK for me, and the only reason for a new test would be the DisableSFC thing... Thanks for WinNTSetup!!!!

JFX, thanks again, you're the best!!! I promise I will (try to) shut up now, it's just that I've had a few days of vacation, and this was another opportunity to learn a lot of new stuff. For me, WinPE_SE (which of course has a lot of JFX in it!!) and WinNTSetup are among the best tools I ever had the pleasure to use. Just as good or better than my all-time favorites: Semware Editor (used that for almost 25 years now), TCC (/LE, 4dos, 4nt, etc), and "Mini" Office 97 portable (no joke, I still use the 18 exe and dll files, 17,5mb, from 1997, they've produced literally tens of thousands of files over the years, I use Excel and Word only, still works in Windows 8x64). But I digress again... Have a good 2013, you're my PC-Person Of The Year 2012!!!

Sorry, one addendum: Could it be that the update files are all kept in: \Windows\SoftwareDistribution? So it would be save to "delete" them (or not include them in the image). The "update-history" would still be remembered correctly? Sorry if this might seem offtopic, still, to me it's 100% WinNTSetup related....

JFX, quite an unexpected surprise to see you replying to my Audit mode experiments! Thank you. I'm new to wimscript.ini files, I'll have to look up how they're used, I'll do that tomorrow. Already found it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825006.aspx Now I *did* notice that my "Audit mode - updated" wim files grew quite a bit (30-50%), that was a bit more than I expected from true "integration", but now I'll do the capturing again with the exclusion list. Now you're not saying that /captureimage is so "dumb" to capture the pagefile and swapfile??! (And yes, I've tested tested the Audit-mode-updated wim files with WinNTSetup, working great. Tested Windows 8 Enterprise, Pro, ProWMC, all in 32 and 64bit). Today, I did a little experiment with reading HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SystemInformation in WinPESE. It looks like this is only available in PE? It looks like it's not available in "full" Windows. I can use this to check which PC I'm installing on (like the "BIOSVersion" key). Depending on the value, different "drivers.iso" files are mounted (and the driveletter passed on to WinNTSetup). Seems to work quite nicely. ...this is just to let you know that everytime WinNTSetup is surprising me with its power!! Also, did a little testing on the new DaRT 8.0. JFX, you're probably the best person to ask this: What does DaRT 8.0 have that can't be done with a tool like WinPE_SE, with some nice portable tools?! For one thing, I love having the Diskmanagement GUI!!! (Don't have that my standard WinPE4 yet!).

Thanks to all you experts!! I'm sorry, this stuff just goes over my head sometimes... If it wasn't for great tools like these..... Please confirm (or deny) that the W7/W8 images I mentioned are more hardware-independent....? (While all you friendly geniuses are not away on holiday yet....) Because if they're not, I'm not sure there's a lot of use to them. Please correct me if I'm wrong! I'm just looking for a way to "inject" my OS install images with updates, and have only recentlry learned about doing this with DISM addpackage, and the Audit mode I mentioned. Now I still don't know which way is best... Audit mode looks reasonably convenient, but only if the resulting image is universal!

Thanks!!! I guess it was my "mistake" to assume it would work more like in W7/W8? I mean, microsoft offers a "standard" new sysprep for XPSP3 (see the link in msg 434). So is this correct: (1) A hardware independent XP sysprep image is not "normal" (2) The same for W7/W8 *is* normal ??? Then how to make a new, up-to-date XP iso?!? nlite and the likes only?

Oh, never mind then. It looked like a good idea to have an updated XP and make such an image. I still wonder if I can make a "normal" looking XP setup folder structure. I sometimes see those "updated until nov/2012 XPSP3" iso's, I wonder how they're created then... ... For w7/w8, those "Audit mode"/ updated/ imaged wims *are* supposed to be "universal", right? (Can be used on any system?) For XP, it seemed a nice idea, because having a somewhat updated XPSP3 seems quite a hassle. I must admit I usually work with "outdated" XP's, I hate online updates. The systems we use are used in mostly offline situations anyway. You know, old(er) hardware, old(er) (expensive) software. I never "use" viruses, either :-)

Maybe somebody can help with me this next question, maybe it's not 100% ontopic, please skip it then: I'm not an expert, but I've learned so much in the last year, and like to "fool around" to learn new thing. Last week, I created new .wim files for Windows 7 and Windows 8, which include all Windows updates until now. I created them this way: (1) WinNTSetup: use w7.wim, select a modified unattend.xml with the <Reseal><Mode>Audit</Mode></Reseal> part (2) Install all updates (except PC specific ones). (3) dism /online /cleanup-image (4) In Sysprep window: Select OOBE, Generalize and Shutdown (5) Boot with PE4 iso (6) dism /capture-image /imagefile:e:\w8new.wim /capturedir:c:\ /name:"Windows 8 updated" This is working great, for Windows 8 and Windows 7. So I wanted to see how this works in XP and downloaded XPSP3 Deployment Tools: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11282 What I would like to know: - Is Sysprepping XP comparable to the W7/W8 way? Is an image that I create this way, usable on "all" PC's? - What is the best way to image this sysprepped XP? I use Ghost and TrueImage, but up to now only for "pc-specific" and complete XP installs (not generalized installs). Besides, the "best/ cleanest" way would be to create setup files as they are present in the normal XP setup ISO, right? How can I create that? - I've read that I van also use my PE4 boot ISO, then use DISM /capture-image to create a **.wim** from a XP setup. Well, that's nice, but WinNTSetup can't install XP from a .wim, can it? Thanks for any and all insight on this. But if you can't be bothered, that's fine too!!

OK, I've done my XP test, first a normal setup on my testnotebook with WinNTSetup, then a second test with -disablesfc, -disablesystemrestore, -disablehibernate. With the second test, I confirmed that the commandline options were also checked in the "Tweaks" screen. I timed all the stages by hand (t-39, t-13, etc). I was expecting (as JFX said) stages t-9 through t-3 to be skipped (because of -disablesfc), saving me 1m40s of setup times (as the first test showed). But, completely unexpected, all the stages took exactly as long on test 2, as they did on test 1. So in some way, disablesfc was not correctly applied. Now I'm sure it must be something *I* did (maybe a conflicting setting in Winnt.sif, even though I can't find anything). Nevertheless, this test has shown me that the sfc stage only took 1m40s on this particular system, and that's still worth the test.

Well, another stupidity on my part then. Luckily, it's not the first time. Very sorry to waste your time. I'm a bit confused now, because I used 3 commandline options on Windows 8 (DisableSystemRestore, DisableSFC, DisableHibernate), and have 400mb more free space on C: Now if DisableSFC has no effect on Win8, it must be one of the other 2. Another thing that added to my confusion is that the "-DisableSFC" commandline option caused on error (using with Windows 8) on the second-to-last version (which you corrected the same day). That's why I thought it *did* have an effect under Win8. But all is well, I'm looking forward to testing -DisableSFC on Windows XP.

So "T-9 to T-3" also applies to Win8? I will test also on Windows XPin the coming days...

So Alacran hasn't replied on the $oem$ file yet, maybe he found out that a custom $oem$ dir is already supported? I just wanted to come back to my testing of the new commandline switches (DisableSystemRestore, DisableSFC, DisableHibernate). I did a quick test on installing Windows 8, first time without the switches, second time with the new switches. As expected (as JFX mentioned), after the second test there's about 400mb more free space on C:\. (thanks to DisableSFC). So that's a good thing, and I'll keep using it for the time being. I also expected a little decrease in Setup time, but that was not the case, I wonder why? Thanks JFX, for making WinNTSetup better once more....

Oh well, I was wondering if it maybe was not available for Windows 8 (turn off SFC). ...so I will make yet another testrun today, and will report back on the time and mb's saved!!!

Thanks. I fully agree on UAC. For the "Postinstall" program I made it's better to have it turned off, temporarily. Thanks for the pagefile explanation. Before, I couldn't imagine a situation where you would want to turn it off, but lately, when creating VM's (like those nice systems that "help" new W8 systems), I understand that in some VM cases, you can turn off the pagefile. Testing the new switches worked very well, except for "-disableSFC" in Windows 8. Now I'm not sure if that's intended? (It shows "error at line 1026).