Cartoonite

Further testing has revealed that, not only did I fail to properly fix my Thunderbird silent install, but the Classic Theme is being applied at some point before that. Since the only app that installs before that is Firefox, using an installer I built myself, the theme must be getting set before start.cmd is ever executed. As far as I can recall, no changes at all were made to cmdlines.txt or either of its associated files since the test install that did come out properly. The only changes that I can think of were in start.cmd and winnt.sif. I will go over winnt.sif to see if I can isolate some of the changes, maybe this will give a better idea of exactly what is causing this. New/edited winnt.sif lines: [Unattended] Repartition=Yes [Display] Xresolution=800 YResolution=600 BitsPerPel=16 [Components] minesweeper=off calc=off hearts=off solitaire=off spider=off pinball=off freecell=off [Branding] BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes [URL] Home_Page=about:blank [Proxy] Proxy_Enable=0 Use_Same_Proxy=0 I believe the rest of the file is exactly as it was previously. I don't see anything here that should have any effect at all on the default theme. I beleive there is a way to specifically state the desired default theme in either winnt.sif or regtweaks.reg. I'll try that next to see if the issue is resolved, I guess. Anyone want to tell me how to do it and save me the trouble of searching?

Download cmdow from here. On second thought, if you followed the Guide's example on using RunOnceEx.cmd, are you not already using cmdow in that script? Just call the same function again at the start of your other scripts. cmdow @ /HID @echo off

That doesn't even qualify as hacking. By that definition I could claim to have "hacked" my home system just because I clicked a link that i knew would install a virus. I was having discussion about this the other day with my friend's wife. I was over at his place helping him reformat and reinstall Windows because he'd managed to get his system completely hijacked. His wife, who isn't much for computers, was asking me to explain why someone would want to create a virus. I really had no answer for her. The best I could come up with was, "For the same reason that the big kid likes to beat up the little kid in the school yard; 'Because I can!'" The wanton ignorance of some people really ticks me off.

Since I assume you want to delete the "Sample Pictures" folder from your My Pictures, and not just delete the pictures themselves, you need to do two things. First delete the pictures and their directory from %AllUsersProfile%\Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures," and then delete the link that refers to it from your own My Documents folder. I use the following in my cleanup.cmd to do this: ECHO. ECHO Deleting Sample Pictures... RD /Q /S "%AllUsersProfile%\Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures" DEL "%UserProfile%\My Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures.lnk" The echo statements are, of course, completely cosmetic. Once the Sample Pictures folder itself has been deleted (not just your own personal link) all new users created will be created without a link in their My Pictures folder.

I've read that post before prathapml, and it is definitely a great idea. I have the thread bookmarked and will be looking into it more once I've got my uA in and of itself working the way it is supposed to.

If I'm reading these if/then statements correctly, any input other than Y after "Please press Y or N" will execute the else statement. Is there any way to code this so that any input other than Y or N will be ignored? I thought of something like this, :YesNo set /p Variable="Please press Y or N" if /I "%Variable%"<>"Y" and /I "%Variable%"<>"N" goto:Yesnobut this will cause the "Please press Y or N" to be repeated over and over until the correct input is received. I want all input other than Y or N to be silently disregarded. Also, I'm not sure if this is the correct coding for "does not equal."

Great idea. I've always just copied the saved games to my second hard drive and then copied them back after I've reinstalled the game. Now I can add my saved games to my uA CD and I will be ready to pick up where I left off as soon as I reinstall the games themselves. Or maybe I can go even crazier, and add even the games to the uA CD. B) Hmmm..........

To be honest, I'm not even sure where I got information about putting this line in. My $OEM$ folder is currently sitting parallel to the I386 folder, and is being processed accordingly. If this line is unneccesary to achieve that, I will remove it. My uA CD is an amalgamation of two seperate guides, if not more. I took those lines from a guide I saw in the October 2004 issue of Maximum PC. I believe, just from reading them, that they are meant to speed up the uA process somewhat. I never thought to look them up in ref.chm. Since they aren't listed there, I imagine they, too, are useless code. I will remove them as well. Yay, 76 more bytes saved. I'm not sure. As I said, only a select few of those programs are new additions. I will rerun the uA in a semi-attended mode to see if I can pinpoint the time when the theme switch occurs.

Addictive isn't the word. Since I registered here I have spent more time trying to help other people solve their issues than I have working on getting my own uA CD working. I think this site needs some kind of warning label or something on the front page. Maybe something requiring visitors to acknowledge that they are about to sign their lives away?

AFAIK prathapml, you should still be able to use system variables. To the best of my knowledge WinRAR (or any other archive program) stores a full relative path. I don't believe there is ever an instance where drive letter is stored in the archive as well. (If anyone knows otherwise, please correct me.) So, if you want to have a bunch of files extracted to various locations on your system drive, you can set the archive to extract itself to %systemdrive% and archive all the files inside with their respective full paths relative to the root of the system drive. One drawback I can see to this is that user-specific variables can not be used. (You can't, for example, have the files in the archive extracted to your %userprofile% directory, because the folder structure within the archive is already set.) Since with a uA CD you will also be the one responsible for creating the user account, and will therefore know its name, this shouldn't be too much of an issue. I hope this makes sense, because as I'm trying to read over it, I find that I'm only confusing myself. Just let me know if it needs further clarification, and I'll try again once I've gotten some sleep.

Try to be a bit more patient. One hour isn't such a long time, especially not at 4 o'clock in the morning. RunOnceEx.cmd should go in $OEM$ itself and should be referenced in cmdline.txt like so: [COMMANDS] "REGEDIT /S regtweaks.reg" "useraccounts.cmd" "RunOnceEx.cmd" Cleanup.cmd can go wherever you like. The only reference to it is in RunOnceEx.cmd, so just make sure the path there matches where you actually place it.

I'm testing a partially completed uA CD, and found that I boot to a modified classic theme after everything is done. This didn't happen the last time I tested, and I haven't made all that many changes. I just removed a few more components via the [Components] section of winnt.sif, added auto-formatting for my drive so that I don't have to attend while VPC loads up the initial setup in it's classic super-slow motion, and added a few more programs to be installed. Here's a copy of the files I think are relevant. Anyone see anything that could be switching my main user account to a classic theme? winnt.sif ;SetupMgrTag [Data] AutoPartition=1 MsDosInitiated="0" UnattendedInstall="Yes" AutomaticUpdates=yes [Unattended] UnattendMode=FullUnattended OemPreinstall=Yes OemSkipEula=Yes OEMFilesPath=.\$OEM$ NoWaitAfterTextMode=1 NoWaitAfterGUIMode=1 WaitForReboot=No TargetPath=\Windows DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore UnattendSwitch=yes Repartition=Yes [GuiUnattended] OEMSkipRegional=1 TimeZone=35 OEMSkipWelcome=1 AdminPassword=* EncryptedAdminPassword=NO [UserData] ProductKey= FullName="" OrgName="" ComputerName= [Display] Xresolution=800 YResolution=600 BitsPerPel=16 [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1 Language=00001009 [Identification] JoinWorkgroup=WORKGROUP [Networking] InstallDefaultComponents=Yes [Components] msmsgs=off msnexplr=off OEAccess=off zonegames=off minesweeper=off calc=off hearts=off solitaire=off spider=off pinball=off freecell=off [WindowsFirewall] Profiles=WindowsFirewall.TurnOffFirewall [WindowsFirewall.TurnOffFirewall] Mode=0 [Branding] BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes [URL] Home_Page=about:blank [Proxy] Proxy_Enable=0 Use_Same_Proxy=0 [GuiRunOnce] %systemdrive%\install\start.cmd cmdlines.txt [COMMANDS] "REGEDIT /S regtweaks.reg" "useraccounts.cmd" regtweaks.reg Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ;Disable Automatic Restart in the event of a BSOD [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl] "AutoReboot"=dword:00000000 ;Speed up shutdown [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control] "WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="3000" ;Disables Error Reporting, but notifies when errors occur [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PCHealth\ErrorReporting] "DoReport"=dword:00000000 ;Speed up Network Browsing by removing Network Scheduled Tasks [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\... ...Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace\{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}] ;Disables Windows Tour bubble popup [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Tour] "RunCount"=dword:00000000 ;Disable Imapi CD-Burning Service [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ImapiService] "Start"=dword:00000004 ;Disable Messenger Service (to stop spam. Does not affect MSN or Windows Messenger) [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Messenger] "Start"=dword:00000004 ;Disable Remote Registry Service [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteRegistry] "Start"=dword:00000004 ;This will add "Services" to the right-click menu of "My Computer" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\services] @=hex(2):53,00,65,00,72,00,76,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,73,00,00,00 "SuppressionPolicy"=dword:4000003c [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\services\command] @=hex(2):25,00,77,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,69,00,72,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73, 00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,6d,00,6d,00,63,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00, 65,00,20,00,2f,00,73,00,20,00,25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52, 00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00, 32,00,5c,00,73,00,65,00,72,00,76,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,6d,00,73, 00,63,00,20,00,2f,00,73,00,00,00 ;This adds the "Open Command Window Here" on the right click menu for folders [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd] @="Open Command Window Here" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command] @="cmd.exe /k \"cd %L\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd] @="Open Command Window Here" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd\command] @="cmd.exe /k \"cd %L\"" ;Max your Internet Explorer's simultaneous downloads to 10 (default was 2) [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings] "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server"=dword:0000000a "MaxConnectionsPerServer"=dword:0000000a start.cmd CLS @echo off TITLE Windows XP SP2 - Unattended Installation FOR %%d IN (D: E: F: G: H: I: J: ... V: W: X: Y: Z:) DO IF EXIST %%d\CD.TXT SET CDROM=%%d ECHO. ECHO Over the next few minutes you will see automated installations ECHO of various sofware applications, windows updates, and registry ECHO tweaks being implemented. The computer will restart automatically ECHO once the whole process has finished! ECHO. ECHO Installing Mozilla Firefox 1.0 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\MozillaFirefox\Firefox_1.0.exe ECHO. ECHO Installing Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\MozillaThunderbird\Thunderbird_ 1.0.exe ECHO. ECHO Installing J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Java\J2SE.exe ECHO. ECHO Installing TweakUI Powertoy for Windows XP ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\TweakUI\tweakui.msi /qn ECHO. ECHO Installing Windows Support Tools ECHO Please wait... start /wait msiexec /i %CDROM%\support\tools\suptools.msi /qn ECHO. ECHO Installing Fairstars Audio Converter ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\FairstarsAudioConverter\Fairstar.exe /silent /sp- ... .../dir="%systemdrive%\Multimedia\FairStars Audio Converter" /loadinf=%systemdrive%\... ...Install\Applications\FairstarsAudioConverter\fairstar.txt copy %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\FairstarsAudioConverter\conreg.ini ... ..."%systemdrive%\Multimedia\FairStars Audio Converter\" ECHO. ECHO Installing K-Lite Mega Codec Pack ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\K-LiteMegaCodecPack\klmcodec116.exe /silent /sp- ... .../dir="%systemdrive%\Multimedia\K-Lite Codec Pack" /loadinf=%systemdrive%\Install\K-LiteMegaCodecPack\klmcodec116.txt ECHO. ECHO Installing MSN Messenger 6.0.0602 Final ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\MSN\MsnMsgs.msi /Qn ECHO. ECHO Installing WinRAR 3.41 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\WinRAR\wrar341.exe /s ECHO. ECHO Installing Adobe Reader 6 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\AdobeReader6\acroread602.exe" ECHO. ECHO Installing Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\SpybotSD\spybotsd13.exe /silent /nocancel /dir="%systemdrive%\... ...Utilities\Spybot - Search & Destroy" /group="Security\Spybot - Search & Destroy\" ECHO. ECHO Installing Nero Burning ROM v6.6.0.3 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\Nero\Nero6603.exe /silent /noreboot /no_ui /sn=REMOVED /write_sn REGEDIT /S %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\Nero\RemoveFilterCheck.reg ECHO. ECHO Installing Daemon Tools 3.46 ECHO Please wait... start /wait msiexec /i %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\DaemonTools\daemon.msi /qn /norestart ECHO. ECHO Installing Winamp 5.0.7 ECHO Please wait... start /wait msiexec /i %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\Winamp\Winamp.msi /qn ini=%systemdrive%\Install\Applications\Winamp\Winamp.ini ECHO. ECHO Installing Yahoo Messenger 6.0 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\YahooMessenger\ymsgrie.exe /s taskkill /im Ypager.exe ECHO. ECHO Installing Zoom Player 4 ECHO Please wait... start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Applications\ZoomPlayer\zp400std.exe /S /D="C:\Multimedia\Zoom Player\" ECHO. ECHO Cleaning up and Rebooting start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\Cleanup.cmd EXIT Note: Thunderbird install failed because I renamed the installer and forgot to edit my batch file. I'm pretty sure that at that point my user still had a default Windows XP Theme, but since I didn't expect the theme to change, I wasn't specifically looking to see which theme was applied either. cleanup.cmd CLS @echo off TITLE Unattended Installation Cleanup ECHO Deleting Useless Shortcuts... DEL "%allusersprofile%\Start Menu\Windows Catalog.lnk" DEL "%allusersprofile%\Start Menu\Set Program Access and Defaults.lnk" ECHO. ECHO Deleting ASP.NET User Account created by .NET Framework 1.1... net user aspnet /delete REM ECHO. REM ECHO Deleting Desktop Shortcuts... REM DEL "%allusersprofile%\desktop\*.lnk" REM DEL "%userprofile%\desktop\*.lnk" ECHO. ECHO Deleting Sample Pictures RD /Q /S "%AllUsersProfile%\Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures" DEL "%UserProfile%\My Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures.lnk" ECHO. ECHO Restarting the PC in 1 minute... shutdown.exe -r -f -t 60 -c "Windows XP will now restart in 1 minute, this will give enough time ... ...for the shortcuts to update and for the shell to fully load before its ready to restart!" ECHO. ECHO Deleting Temp Installation Files... RD /S /Q %systemdrive%\Drivers RD /S /Q %systemdrive%\install EXIT I think that's all the relevant files, and probably one or two irrelevant ones as well. As an additional note, the added programs since the last test are Firefox, Thunderbird (which failed), Windows Support Tools and Winamp. Adobe's Acrobat Reader was switched from the official dl available from the Adobe site to the silent install executable with 6.02 integrated created by RyanVM and available here. Any feedback on this would be appreciated. I've gone over all of these files, and don't see anything that should have caused this. If this is something that I should have done a search for, please at least give me a hint on where to start, because I'm stumped. Edit: Some of the code has been slightly modified so that it fits nicer on the forum pages. Any pair of lines that end/start with ... are actually single lines in my files. The CD.txt file line also contains a complete list of drive letters, I just truncated it for the same reason.

Hi GLO, My experience with factory-built machines is very limited. I've always prefered to build my own. My limited experience, however, leads me to believe that factory restore discs are usually based on imaging software rather than actual installation CDs. If this is true in your neighbor's case, you may not be able to use the recovery CDs as proof of an existing license. If that is the case, you may be forced to do an upgrade install. I will do some more testing with my Windows 2000 Upgrade CD to see if I can perform a clean install by having the Windows Setup program reformat a partition that has an existing Windows 98 installation on it. It may take me a bit, but hopefully I can have an answer for you by the end of the weekend. If your neighbor's RAM arrives in the meantime, please try on your own and let me know the results. If it's not possible to have the setup program reformat a partition with an existing Windows install on it, you will have to contact either Compaq and/or Microsoft to see what your, or rather, your neighbour's options are. I hope it works out. Keep me posted.

Quick question. Since my general plan is to always implement a low-CD space solution, which of these the following methods is likely to take up less space on the automated CD? Deleting all shortcuts with cleanup.cmd and importing new ones from $Docs? Deleting all shortcuts from cleanup.cmd and creating new ones with shortcut.exe? Copying/moving shortcuts created via installers to the desired locations (Quicklaunch, for example), delting all remaing shortcuts and then using either $Docs or shortcut.exe only for programs that don't create their own shortcuts anywhere? Since I'm currently working on my first unattended CD, any answers that will save me time in testing everything for myself would be greatly appreciated. B)

What exactly are you getting? A normal attended Windows install? A normal unattended install of Windows without any additional programs? Some other possibility that I haven't thought of? I had a quick look at your winnt.sif file and everything looked okay to me. Please clarify your issue so that we can troubleshoot it more accurately. And please read Astalavista's post and/or my PM, they both relate to the same thing.

Are you making any kind of hardware changes to the network before, during, or after the re-installation, or is the reinstall in and of itself enough to fix the issue? Other things I thought of, in no particular order: How many computers are on the network, and does the DHCP server have enough allocatable addresses for all of them? Are you running a peer-to-peer or client/server network? If the latter, has the DHCP server somehow been set up to only assign addresses to PCs it can authenticate in AD? (I don't even know for sure whether or not this is possible, just something I thought of.) When you tried ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew, did they generate any kind of error message? This would be a big help in trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem. I tried a couple of possible breaks, just to see what kind of response I would get. With the adapter set to statically assign itself an APIPA (I have no idea how or why that could have happend) I got this: C:\>ipconfig /release Windows IP Configuration The operation failed as no adapter is in the state permissible for this operation. C:\>ipconfig /renew Windows IP Configuration The operation failed as no adapter is in the state permissible for this operation. With no DHCP server available on the network I got this: C:\>ipconfig /release Windows IP Configuration Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : C:\>ipconfig /renew Windows IP Configuration An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection : unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out. Anyone know what, if any, error message would be generated if the DHCP server were out of addresses? It would save me quite a bit of time in setting up an environment to test it. Just a few random thoughts from a relative newbie. Hopefully some of them will help, or at least spark thoughts of your own that will lead to the solution. Keep us posted. I know I, at least, am quite interested in knowing exactly what the issue is.

Did you build your machine and install Windows 2000 yourself from CD, or did you purchase it from a manufacturer who shipped it to you with Windows pre-loaded on it? I believe if you want to do a clean install with your Windows XP Professional Upgrade CD you will need to have a 2000 Professional (or earlier) CD on-hand. I re-tested with my 2000 Professional Upgrade CD to find out exactly what the installation requires. I have attached a jpg of the verification screen from Windows 2000 Professional Upgrade so you have an idea of what it looks like. Again, I imagine any Windows Upgrade License CD would offer the same option, but unfortunately I have no way of testing XP Pro SP2 for you to be sure. So, I guess the short answer to your question is "yes," with the CD from your previous version of Windows serving as your means of inputing "previous licence details." Please let me know how it turns out, I would like to know for sure whether or not my assumptions are correct.

Totoymola is right. There is a free tool available here that will rename the Start Button. It also supports names longer (or shorter) than 5 characters which I seem to recall from previous reading was a limitation when hex-editing explorer.exe directly. I think this is probably the easiest way for fools like me who would likely do more harm than good in trying to recode major windows files on their own.

The file name shown on the link you provided is a .msi. You should be able to silently install it with: msiexec /i %path%\messenger.msi /qn See here for details.

Glad to help. I suspect your error was the one that I just realized even the code I posted would generate. If cleanup.cmd exists in %systemdrive%\Install, which is where I believe most people, including myself, put it, the code I posted will delete the cmd file before it has a chance to execute the shutdown command. For that reason, the code in cleanup.cmd should be: shutdown.exe -r -f -t 60 RD /S /Q %systemdrive%\Install This way the shutdown command is executed before the directory where our cmd file is located gets deleted. The 60-second delay allows enough time for the RD command to be processed before the pc reboots. My apologies if the errors in my previous code caused anyone any problems. I guess that's what I get for trying to script at 5 o'clock in the morning.

This will delete all the sample jpg files in the Sample Pictures folder, but will not delete the Sample Pictures folder itself. IMO, a better solution would be: RD /Q /S "%AllUsersProfile%\Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures" DEL "%UserProfile%\My Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures.lnk" This will delete all the sample pictures, the Sample Pictures directory itself, and the link to the Sample Pictures directory created in your user's personal My Pictures folder. Any users created afterwards will also have no link created. Thanks to ClauSoft for bumping this thread back up to the top where I would see it. I can now implement this on my own automated CD, fixing an annoyance I hadn't even considered yet.

Just to let you know, Astalavista, the bitmap file doesn't have to be 48 x 48. I use the same picture of the cheshire cat that I use for my avatar here as my User Account Picture. It's native size is 200 x 142. When I submitted it to MSFN, it was automatically resized to 100 x 100. Unfortunately this changed the relative size of height and width, and my kitty now looks sorely in need of a diet. In assigning it to my UAP, it gets scaled down without changing the relative size. This means I have a light blue bar above and below the actual picture to make it into a square, but at least it doesn't make me look like a fat cat.

I believe it causes a problem because setting AutoLogon in [GuiUnattended] as well as executing your autologon.reg registry tweaks configures the pc to automatically logon with two seperate accounts. The following is taken from the copy of ref.chm distributed with SP2 Deployment Tools: As you can see, AutoLogon in [GuiUnattended] tells the PC to automatically log in using the built-in Administrator account after the first boot. You then inport your autologon.reg tweaks telling the computer to automatically log in using the Owner account that you created. I suspect this conflict is what is generating your errors.I also see that you have "AutoAdminLogon"="0" in your autologon.reg file, where I use "AutoAdminLogon"="1". I'm not sure exactly what effect this difference would have, but everything I have read on the subject has indicated that "AutoAdminLogon"="1" is the prefered setting. He is referring to this line in your code: REG ADD %KEY%\030 /V 1 /D "%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c rd /s /q """%systemdrive%\Install\""" /f If I am reading this correctly, you are essentially trying to import a key that will open a command prompt and then execute the following command: rd /s /q "%systemdrive%\Install\" I can think of two possible solutions. The first, and far easier method, is to eliminate the registry entries from cleanup.cmd altogether. Unless there is some reason why you don't want the Install directory deleted until after the next reboot, you can input your rd command directly in cleanup.cmd and then reboot with the following as your complete cleanup.cmd file. RD /S /Q %systemdrive%\Install shutdown.exe -r -f -t 0 You can enclose %systemdrive%\Install in quotes if you like, but it's not required. Same for the trailing backslash after Install. Edit: Please do not use this code (above), it will generate an error. See my post below for an explanation. If you really want to keep the Install directory until after the following reboot, or if you just want to know how it's done, try the following for your cleanup.cmd: SET KEY=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx REG ADD %KEY%\030 /VE /D "Delete Work Directory" /f REG ADD %KEY%\030 /V 1 /D "%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c rd /s /q %systemdrive%\Install" /f shutdown.exe -r -f -t 0 This should import the rd command as it appears in the alternate cleanup.cmd I posted. The backslashes are needed before the quotation marks to indicate to the importing program that the quotes are a part of the string that is being imported, not the end of it. This is what Alanoll was talking about. Any quotes within a string that is itself quoted (embedded quotes) must be preceded by a backslash (escaped) to be imported properly. So, if you wanted to import the rd command with all quotes and the trailing backslash after Install, your line would look like this: REG ADD %KEY%\030 /V 1 /D "%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c rd /s /q \"\"\"%systemdrive%\Install\\"\"" /f That line is a direct copy of the one from your original code with a backslash added in front of every quote except for the first (after /D) and last (before /f) ones. It still looks to me like you have an excessive number of quotes there, but that may just be because I am unfamiliar with the /c switch for cmd.exe. Anyway, I hope this clears things up for you. I know when I first got started with this whole unattended thing, embedding quotes was confusing to me too.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say you are purchasing "an XP pro sp2 upgrade licence," but I was able to do a fresh install of 2000 Professional from an upgrade CD. During install it simply asked me to insert a CD from a previous version of Windows to prove that I did indeed have a license to an old version that I wanted to "upgrade" from. I would think a Windows XP SP2 Upgrade CD (which is what I assume you are talking about) would provide the same functionality.

I couldn't agree more. I'm still pretty new here, and thus tend to be more of a helpee than a helper, but I'm always willing to lend a hand when I'm able. Welcome to the party!