getwired

Note that by using Int13 as the HP utility does, it will limit the systems which that key can boot on to systems which have a BIOS that interprets the USB Flash Drive geometry exactly the same. Meaning a UFD prepared on one HP system will most likely not work on a Dell, Sony, etc. Even if (as RiBond pointed out) the BIOS implements support for booting them).

Regarding a GUI front end, you could use either Visual Basic or HTA if you want to do a full-screen GUI - both will require some work (see buildoptionalcomponents.vbs for HTA). Once that's running making an HTA is the same as an HTML page, without the security framework of IE. You could obviously also do a UI in VC(++) if you can code it. RIPrep = Sysprep for RIS. The requirements are the same for both, the source and destination systems must share the same HAL. They don't have to be identical. The scenario would be almost identical to what you are doing. Start the system with WinPE, identify it (HAL is most important - WMI in WinPE 2004/1.5 will give you that) and then install the image from the UNC. That make sense? Best place to start is the sysprep documentation in the deploy.cab on the Windows product CD (or check to see if the Windows XP SP2 deployment tools documentation is available yet on Microsoft.com). HTH.

MSXML, the other binaries you noted, and several others (try MSHTML for example) all have this nasty habit of pulling a file out of themselves when registered, and then processing the contents of that file. Creative, yes. Pretty? Not when you're running from CD. You either need to figure out what's in that file, include it, and install it properly, or create a RAMDrive and point to it as your TEMP location. That should work.

Note that if you have Gb or faster Ethernet, and the NIC driver is set to run at full duplex (many are not - you may need to tinker with the inf file) then RIS booting WinPE is actually the fastest way to boot.