RichM

well the script is over 1000 lines... what are you getting stumped with, and I'll post relevant sections or tell you how I got around it?

I have a very nice computer setup HTA (HTML application) that does indeed run on WinPE 2005, but the onmouseover actions do not seem to be working on WinPE, though they work fine on XP. Does anyone know what I need to add in (dll or something) to make this work on WinPE? the script is pretty well customized to our setup at work, but I may share some aspects if people are interested. It's vbscript in an hta. thanks Rich

I never found a workaround besides adding the drivers. I added the drivers for a Dell 15 inch monitor but I still get it for a Samsung monitor. It doesn't seem to affect the installation so I went on to better things. If you find how to disable that, please do post the solution! Rich

Ok this is getting annoying.... all my drivers are loading, but that pesky screen keeps coming up! There was another post, another thread, that someone recommended adding: [Display] BitsPerPel = 32 XResolution = 1024 YResolution = 768 VRefresh = 60 AutoConfirm = 1 I did this, no change. (I had everything but VRefresh and AutoConfim already in there) It's the stupid Plug and Play Monitor being detected. Note that setup doesn't actually stop, it continues and right before the screen blanks a few times (installing the OEM video drivers I assume) the hardware detection dialog goes away. I included the monitor drivers in the drivers\00_sys directory, but it doesn't install them. After setup is through, I can go in and update the monitor drivers manually, using the files in the drivers\00_sys directory, and then it installs them fine. Nothing seems to change, but how do I make the stupid detection box not come up?!?!?! DisableDynamicUpdates does not do it, by the way

Yes I see that, it isn't taking my TCP/IP settings and there were no spaces there, I changed to spaces and it still isn't taking them. So many things to do, so little time I'd bet there's already info on TCP/IP though...

Yep... DVD-RW x4 is good... x12 is better I just finished with the added drivers and it worked fine, no stopping. so either it was the drivers, or it was adding the space on either side of the =, as in: DisableDynamicUpdates = Yes not DisableDynamicUpdates=Yes does the space matter??

well... I'm not exactly sure what system the monitor came from... I have 4 different types of Dell Optiplexes at my desk, and none of the monitors actually came with any of the 4 that I have here. (plus I use MS VPC because sometimes waiting to burn a CD is too long a wait ) so I just tried searching for monitor drivers, for 151fp, looking for a monitor device group, etc... gave up after 30 minutes -- may not sound long but I have gotten up to speed from ground zero with a working AIO DVD after 3 days, including cdshell customized, BartPE customized, multiple encrypted product keys, etc, etc usually the Dell site is good, and I only buy Dells if I can help it. Ah an update.... Found New Hardware Wizard: used winnt.sif from floppy, minus the DisableDynamicUpdates = Yes switch... Told it I would choose a driver for this device, it failed, said there "was a problem installing this hardware: 6R644387L30YDell E151FPp An error occured during the installation of this device There is no driver selected for the device information set or element" I haven't added the drivers that Ryan linked to, I will in a minute (+rebuild ISO + reburn DVD-RW + re-run setup from DVD)

RyanVM THANKS! guess Dell's search on their support website is about useless then, it was no help on drivers for monitors...

Microsoft MVP for Windows Server - Directory Services Microsoft MVP Info Page thanks, I'll get rid of that line. like I said, though, the wierd thing is out of 5 different setups I'm testing on, it only seems to do it with this monitor. I'll repost with results... thanks again

I thought you hit the nail on the head, I found the syntax and charged over to my winnt.sif and... Doh! it's already in there. ****. Guess that wasn't it. Here's an excerpt from my winnt.sif file. ITMT I'm gonna have a surf for "winnt.sif too long", seems like I saw something on that, maybe something's not getting processed? mine's kinda long, but not terribly.....

My drivers are all installing fine in unattended XP install, out of the $OEM$\$1\Drivers directory. Video, audio, system, NIC, etc. Identical Dell OptiPlex GX280s. But one has a dell 17" flat panel monitor, and one has a 15". no drivers listed on Dell site... So during install with the 15", setup suddenly asks if I want to connect to the Internet to search for drivers for the monitor. clicking no, install automatically, it comes to Finish, then setup continues without a hitch. Display seems fine when all is done, and no special monitor drivers have been loaded. But it made setup STOP in the middle so it could ask me to provide nothing meaningful. So 1) is there a log I'm missing somewhere as to where PnP didn't find the drivers it wanted (and what that specifically was)? or 2) is there a way to tell setup that if it doesn't find a particular driver then tough luck, no it MAY NOT stop and ask, it must finish the install like a good setup program?

I think I'm missing context, but... I booted WinPE (well, BartPE), used diskpart to remove the C partition. Ran Ghost32 under BartPE, did partition from image to the free space that used to be C, making a new partition. Closed Ghost32, ran diskpart, did list vol, got Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size ---------------- ---- ---------- ------ --------------- ----------- Volume 0 X AIODVD CDFS DVD-ROM 1166 MB Volume 1 FAT Partition 47 MB Volume 2 NTFS Partition 74 GB Volume 3 D NTFS Partition 74 GB Then I typed: sel vol 2 | assign letter=c and it worked. I did a directory of it and it was fine. Did I miss something in duplicating your issue? Rich

Shrimpy, not sure if it makes a difference, but did you restore from a disk or a partition image? and was the drive existing before or was this a blank disk before [the image]?

I noticed that with Dell OEM SP1a, you can't slipstream SP2 into it (at least, not in the two steps 1) copy CD to hard drive 2) /integrate:SP2) I haven't tried it (we just throw the OEM CD in a drawer and use VLE instead ) but I bet with a little work you could make it take SP2. The newer Dells come with SP2 slipstreamed, and if you were really worried you could probably get Dell to send you a newer XP+SP2 CD. Especially if you call and give them a hard time about slipstream not working - shoddy job for such a big company , etc...

Yeah you two have basically summed up the issues: 1) you could copy to the hard drive and kick setup from there but then you're not using winnt.sif concept you're using unattend.txt (from winnt32 in other words, regardless of what it's called) 2) if you copy to the hard drive then XP can't repartition and format (cleaner), you have to repart and format first with CDshell or ?? (messier) 3) there's no server to copy to here 4) yep CD is RO (no I didn't have to go check that first ) one thought is use a floppy, winnt.sif on a floppy overrides the one on CD... but we'd have to use floppies and I'm not even sure if you can still buy floppy disks, it's been so long since I tried B) I left it out of winnt.sif but it is tedious, you walk away after watching it for 5 minutes (about my attention span for watching SETUP run) and come back an hour later to see that it is sitting there waiting for a computer name (oh yeah, I forgot I didn't put that in, oh bother why couldn't it just time out and let me enter it later?? or ask me at the very beginning of setup... did I just hear someone say "like Longhorn does"? ) I kinda came to the same conclusion about the runonce rename-the-computer script. too bad there's no way to put an input into memory as a udf file and then setup interview checks for this... oh well. I suppose if I were really doing a best practice mass production thing we'd just use RIS or similar at the staging center..., but the AIO DVD lets us send it into the field to re-do crashed boxes. thanks anyway for the help people!

The solution I came up with on this was pretty straight-forward, but here it is in case anyone visits later and wonders the same thing. I set the date on the computer to 2/1/05, 3/1/05, etc and then made encrypted keys for each month, 40 days long. I went through August, and I'm sure I'll update the DVD before then so that should be sufficient. Then I created PRO1-PRO6 directories (and corresponding PRO1.DAT-PRO6.DAT files). I edited the winnt.sif in each directory to add the corresponding month's key. I realize I could have made them each 60 days long and covered a year with 6 keys... but this way is just a little cleaner. 60 days doesn't cover many 2-month periods inclusively... it also seemed a bit repetitive for one entry in one file that changed, but this works. For those not familiar with "PRO1" and "PRO1.DAT", etc - please refer to either gosh's website or flyakite's website for details on booting multiple OS setups (or in this case, multiple configurations). Here is my CDShell.ini file contents if anyone's interested: boot: cls print "\n" print l "...booting to the hard drive in 5 seconds, OR...\n\n" print c "\c0BPress Enter to boot from DVD... \n\n" getkey 5 boot 0x80 if $lastKey == key[enter]; then goto menu # When no key found... goto boot # Printing the Interface menu: set textColor= color[white on black] set boldColor= color[cyan on black] cls print c "\n\cXXÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ \n\n" print c "\c0B Our Installation Disk\n\n" print c "\cXXÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ \n\n" print "\c0E 1) Install Windows XP Pro SP2 \cxx(Normal Selection)\n" print "\c0E 2) Boot to Utilities \n\n" print "\cxx Q) Quit to Command Prompt \n" print " R) Reboot \n" print " ESC) Boot 1st Harddisk \n" print "\n" print " For most installations, simply press 1\n" print "\n" print " Utilities options are advanced, you should not use them without guidance.\n" print c "\n" MainKey: getkey 30 boot 0x80 if $lastKey == key[1]; then goto XP_Pro if $lastKey == key[2]; then goto Utilities if $lastKey == key[q]; then end if $lastKey == key[r]; then reboot if $lastKey == key[esc]; then boot 0x80 XP_Pro: cls print l "\n\cXXInstall Windows XP Pro Unattended \n" print l "\cXXÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ \n" print l "\cXX Select the appropriate month you are in for install \n\n" print l " This DVD is good for February - July 2005. Please contact \n" print l " our Help Desk if you need an updated install disk. \n\n" print l "\c0C Note that Windows XP will reformat the C drive - use the \n" print l "\c0C utilities option if you need to save data before you do this!! \n\n" print "\cxx 1) February \n" print " 2) March \n" print " 3) April \n" print " 4) May \n" print " 5) June \n" print " 6) July \n\n" print "\cXX Press any other key to return to the main menu... \n" XP_Pro_Key: getkey 60 goto menu if $lastKey == key[1]; then chain /PRO1.DAT if $lastKey == key[2]; then chain /PRO2.DAT if $lastKey == key[3]; then chain /PRO3.DAT if $lastKey == key[4]; then chain /PRO4.DAT if $lastKey == key[5]; then chain /PRO5.DAT if $lastKey == key[6]; then chain /PRO6.DAT goto menu Utilities: cls print l "\n\cXXInstall Windows XP Pro Unattended \n" print l "\cXXÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ \n" print l "\cXX BartPE will allow you to save data, use ghost, etc. \n" print l "\cXX This is intended for advanced usage. For normal use of this \n" print l "\cXX installation disk, use one of the Windows XP options. \n\n" print "\cxx 1) BartPE normal \n" print " 2) BartPE loaded in memory (takes longer to load) \n\n" print "\cXX Press any other key to return to the main menu... \n" Utilities_Key: getkey 30 goto menu if $lastKey == key[1]; then chain /BPE1.DAT if $lastKey == key[2]; then chain /BPE2.DAT goto menu getkey goto menu end

Has anyone found a good way to prompt for the computer name before installing XP? I am using gosh's and flyakite's methods for AIO and unattended DVD (thank you both immeasurably!!) and things are working very nicely. Using cdshell for the menu, and all I really care about is XP and BartPE/WinPE booting. But when I am installing, it would be nice if I could prompt in CDShell for the computer name, so you could boot up, choose the XP option, set the computer name, and walk away for the next hour while it installs itself. I guess I would want a prompt in CDShell, and then a routine that puts it in winnt.sif? I want to stay away from floppies if I can help it (I'm with you, gosh - I hate floppies - they are SO last century...) again thanks to gosh and flyakite... I have worked with silent installs for 8 years or so, but their pages took me to a whole new dimension in silent install understanding!! (who said that about standing on the shoulders of giants? ) -rich

mmmm no dice, setting the date ahead simply moves the valid window ahead. I suppose I could have 6 BOOT directories (like VOL1-VOL6) and have a CD that worked for a year, with different winnt.sifs in each, then you choose the XP install that fits in the 60-day date window....

According to Microsoft Well 60 days isn't much of a shelf life, I reckon. We're not real keen on sending our VLK to our staging center in clear text... so absent a better suggestion from someone here, looks like we may attempt the following. Please suggest something better if you know of it! * Bootable WinPE/XP/AIO DVD comes up and runs a little exe. This exe has the key embedded in it and will: - copy the winnt.sif to the hard disk (or maybe we call it something sneaky like wxp86.dat) - run winnt32.exe /encrypt"embedded-key-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx" against this file - kick off winnt32 /unattend:winnt.sif That seems like a lot of work to hide the key, if there was no expiration (or even if it was 90 days, or 180 days or something, it would be ok). And it precludes the feasibility of normal xp-boot-cd installation, because it's not really feasible to burn a new disc for the staging center every 50 days or so... then again... perhaps I just realized the solution! maybe if I set my clock forward a year, then run the encrypt, it will work for 425 days (365+60)... or maybe it won't work for a year. Best try that while you good people mull this over!