Cartoonite

Sounds to me like the CD itself may be damaged or corrupted somehow. Do you have another copy of the CD that you can try using to install XP? Or possibly try making your own copy of the CD by copying the files and boot image off manually and burning them onto a new CD. I suggest that rather than simply making a 1:1 copy because that would likely just reproduce any errors that exist on the original CD on the new copy. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Sorry if I was unclear. SFX stands for SelF-eXtracting. You don't download this, you have to create one. I don't know what the reg settings are either. My friend used InCtrl5 to monitor the installation of DivX to figure out what registry entries were made by the installer and then made a .reg file to import the settings for his custom installer.

I know that it is possible to run an unattended setup using an answer file (WINNT.SIF) placed in the I386 folder of the CD. I also know that it is possible to run a uA setup using an answer file placed on a floppy. My question: if there are two answer files present, one on the floppy and one on the CD, which one will take precedence? Will Setup parse only one of the files and ignore the other, or will it parse them both and only pick one over the other in the instances where there is conflicting information? (e.g.: One file says do not install Windows Messenger, other explicitly says to install it.) In either case, which file is it that takes precedence, the one on the floppy or the one on the CD? Hope this is clear enough. If not, let me know and I will try to explain again.

Sorry raza, I don't know the answer to this, but I will try re-wording it so that maybe others will understand what you are asking. Please correct me if I am mistaken. @All I believe what raza means to say is: @raza Please stop spamming your thread. People will still read it even if it is not on the first page. Lately I have seen a lot of threads coming back after being "dead" for over a year. Please be patient if it takes a few days to get a reply. If you really feel that your thread is being passed over, you can try posting a link to it in another thread that is somewhat related asking people to take a look, or you can also send a member a PM asking them specifically to look if there is someone whose opinion you would like. Both options have worked for me in the past. Hope this helps.

You're right soulin, that is strange and interesting. My PC behaves in the same way, dir *.txt listed both files.

Batch files are just a series of DOS commands. Put the following DOS command into a batch file to create your folders. md C:\MSFN\MSFN1 Don't forget to exit the script at the end.

My friend and I were messing around with this codec (I think) for a while. I seem to recall that he had to create his own install using SFX archives and .reg files because he was unable to get that version of DivX to install silently. Unless you, like he, have problems with the latest version of DivX, I suggest installing that one instead. It installs silently just fine.

This will disable the Automatic Update service that monitors Windows Update to see if any new critical updates have been released. This will disable notification from the Security Center in SP2 that will warn you if automatic updates are not enabled. Like the first set, this will disable Automatic Updates. Rather than stopping the service, these entries configure the service so that it will never check, even if it is still running. I believe these settings are irrelevant once the service has been stopped by the first entry. Don't know for sure, but makes sense to me. Hope this helps.

Integrating SP2 directly into a plain/vanilla/gold/RTM/whatever-you-want-to-call-it version of XP (one without SP1) will save you space (on the CD) over integrating SP2 into a CD with SP1 already integrated. Haven't tested this myself, but have seen the same information posted elsewhere on this site and see no reason to doubt it.

Sounds like you are trying to reset the password for the account that gets logged on automatically at boot up. Check out this reg key. It might have what you are looking for. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "DefaultUserName"="Cartoonite" "DefaultPassword"="password" Names and passwords have been changed to protect the guilty.

Are you looking for a way to keep a specific program, or set of programs, from appearing in that list, or to keep that list from appearing at all? The tweak to set the number of items to be listed is in the text file posted in the first post of this thread. You should be able to get rid of the list by setting that number to zero. The tweak to prevent a specific program from showing up in the list is also in that file. Search for the word Notepad, that's the program that's listed in the text file.

Have you modified these reg files since applying SP2, Sweden? Another thought is that maybe hex format of the reg key entry that MyDomain mentioned changed with SP2. If you set up your taskbar the way you like and then export that reg entry, it should work. Alanoll says he imports it twice to be sure, but I myself have never had any problems just importing from cmdlines.txt. Hope this helps.

To the best of my knowledge, the commands from cmdlines.txt will be executed in the same order that they are listed in the file. So if you have certain commands that need to be executed after certain others, make sure that you have them listed in the proper order. Other than that it really shouldn't make any difference. Having said that, your file looks fine, but there's really no way we can check without knowing the contents of the reg files and cmd scripts. Care to elaborate on this? Maybe if we knew exactly what the symptoms were we would be better able to identify the cause.

Sorry missing_link, but I don't think what you have in mind would work. There is no hardware-based solution for this. Even removing the leads of the reset button is a flawed solution. Think about it. If you disable the reset button, I can still reboot the computer by turning the power off and back on again. The only way to completely prevent students from rebooting the PCs without supervision is to deny them access to the power button. Lock the PCs themselves up, leaving only access to the keyboard/mouse and monitor, unless they specifically require access to optical drives or other forms of removable media to the extent that having them ask a teacher or other responsible person for assistance is not a viable option. Sounds to me like you would be far better off with a software-based solution. To the best of my knowledge there is no way to do this. However, it should be possible to provide the PCs with a boot up script that will be run whenever the PC is booted. That way, even if the students do reboot the PCs, they will only be able to access whatever it is that they should be accessing from those machines. I'm not at all familiar with NetSupport software, so just let me know if for some reason this solution is incompatible with your current security measures. Hope this helps.

A basic slipstreamed SP2 Windows CD is a standard Windows XP CD that has SP2 code integrated into it. If you were to use this kind of CD to install a fresh OS, you would install XP with SP2 right from the start, rather than installing the base OS and then upgrading to SP2 later. There are some Operating Systems available on CD that can be loaded directly from the CD without having to be installed on the harddrive to run. Something like this may help you recover your data. Also, you have two computers. You can always take the harddrive out of the one that won't boot, install it into the one that does and then copy the information off of the "faulty" harddrive onto the good one. Hope this helps. Unfortunately there's really not much anyone can do to help troubleshoot your network connectivity problems until you can get the client machine up and running again.

Yeah, this is pretty much the same thing I came up with. Unfortunately this solution won't work for FeTT!'s problem because he needs to install Windows from original installation discs. If any modification is going to be done, it all has to come from the floppy.

Does that mean that they have finally fixed that with the release of 1.01?

Further testing on this has revealed that the order of the sections within the ISS file can safely be altered. Sections seem to be designated the same way that they are in WINNT.SIF, with [] bracketing the section header and everything in between the headers belonging to the header it follows. Here is the original ISS file created by my record process for this app: [InstallShield Silent] Version=v6.00.000 File=Response File [File Transfer] OverwrittenReadOnly=NoToAll [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-DlgOrder] Dlg0={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdWelcome-0 Count=4 Dlg1={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdLicense-0 Dlg2={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdAskDestPath-0 Dlg3={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdFinish-0 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdWelcome-0] Result=1 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdLicense-0] Result=1 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdAskDestPath-0] szDir=C:\Multimedia\Hey Mr DJ Result=1 [Application] Name=Hey, Mr. D.J. Version=2.1 Company=Ewal.Net Lang=0009 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdFinish-0] Result=1 bOpt1=0 bOpt2=0 [{B026AF1B-FA61-412B-A0BF-97FF84CB1842}-DlgOrder] Count=0 As we can see, the destination path is right smack dab in the middle. This led to the script I posted previously, which would recreate this exact ISS file (with a different drive letter, where applicable). However, I have found that the order of the sections, and of the items within the sections seems to be irrelevant. This means that we can safely move the line that contains the system variable to the very bottom of the ISS file, like so: [InstallShield Silent] Version=v6.00.000 File=Response File [File Transfer] OverwrittenReadOnly=NoToAll [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-DlgOrder] Dlg0={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdWelcome-0 Count=4 Dlg1={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdLicense-0 Dlg2={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdAskDestPath-0 Dlg3={476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdFinish-0 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdWelcome-0] Result=1 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdLicense-0] Result=1 [Application] Name=Hey, Mr. D.J. Version=2.1 Company=Ewal.Net Lang=0009 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdFinish-0] Result=1 bOpt1=0 bOpt2=0 [{B026AF1B-FA61-412B-A0BF-97FF84CB1842}-DlgOrder] Count=0 [{476A9D78-2C04-40BE-A3B0-08591551D082}-SdAskDestPath-0] Result=1 szDir=C:\Multimedia\Hey Mr DJ Now we can remove the destination path line from this file and save it onto the source CD. Finally, we copy this file to the systemdrive during our install process, and then echo the destination path line as before. My new script to install this app looks like this: cmdow @ /HID ::Set variables FOR %%d IN (D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO IF EXIST %%d:\WIN51 SET CDROM=%%d: SET DIR=%CDROM%\Install\Apps\HeyDJ set ISS=%systemdrive%\HeyDJ.iss ::Create ISS file copy /y %DIR%\HeyDJ.iss %ISS% echo szDir=%systemdrive%\Multimedia\Hey Mr DJ >> %ISS% ::Install program Start /wait %DIR%\setup.exe /s /f1"%ISS%" ::Clean up and exit del /f %ISS% exit I know I'm not the only one who has had trouble getting Installshield installers to properly install silently. Hopefully this will help other people who are experiencing the same trouble. Edit: Replaced CODE tags with CODEBOX.

I ran in to the same problem when trying to set up another InstallShield program. I adapted a workaround from an earlier thread that vcBlackBox directed me to. You can find my thread here. I will be updating it shortly (tonight) with some additional information I have been meaning to add. Hope this helps.

No guarantees, but I think this could be the source of your problems. I believe if you are not going to install the default components for the network you will need to specify at some point what components you do want to install. Also useful might be a copy of the original WINNT.SIF so that you (or we) can see exactly what changes you are making when you get this error.

I believe command windows would still appear briefly because they won't be hidden until after the cmdow line is processed. When using cmdow, the addition of the @echo off command is kind of redundant. Moving the cmdow line to the first line of the script may cause the window to be hidden so fast as to be almost unnoticeable to the human eye. Also, make sure that cmdow is being called in every script where you want the window to be hidden. Calling it in the RunOnceEx script will not have any effect on whether or not the windows for the scripts that will be run on first log on will be hidden.

Can't say I know for sure, but seems to me the best place to start would be testing again w/o this hacked file. If it works, you'll know you've found your problem. If not, you're no worse off than you are now.

hmmm... the problem are... i wish to call a cmdlines.txt from a floppy. so from where did you call your cmdlines.txt... from winnt.sif? I think there may have been a bit of miscommunication. Check your PM for contact information if you would like to speak to me directly.

Barring an official response from Microsoft, I just thought of something that might provide a usable workaround. Create a cmd file with the following code and call it from cmdlines.txt as usual. if exist a:\cmdlines.cmd start /wait a:\cmdlines.cmd exit Then make a cmdlines.cmd script that can be run as a sort of pseudo-cmdlines.txt. I will run a test on this now to see what happens and post back with the results in a while. Edit: Forgot about the fact that you are using original CDs. ****. Oh well, maybe this workaround will be useful to others. I will still post results of the test once I am done.

Not sure which app is causing the issue, BoardBabe. Of the ones listed there, the only 2 that I don't use for my own uA are Photoshop and Illustrator. I also use Office XP rather than 2003, but don't really think that is the culprit. Since the reg entry is not there on your apps install, I suggest taking a snapshot of your VPC and then installing your apps one at a time exactly as if you were installing them during the uA process. After each app is installed, check to see if Gina.dll has been added to that reg key. If you get them all installed and it still hasn't come back, try reverting to the snapshot of the fresh install and install all of the apps at once using the same uA script that you usually do. If you still haven't resolved it after this, I suggest starting a new thread so that this one can be moved back onto track of discussing reg tweaks specifically. Hope this helps. Good luck.