jmedwid

Thanks everybody for your ideas. Unfortunately, in my environment those methods won't work very well. I have different QL icons appearing depending on what model hardware I am configuring. I have done quite a bit of reading about the topic on here but haven't found a solution that works well for me yet. FYI.. I even asked Microsoft but they didn't have any good ideas either. @Cartoonite - I will take a look at that registry entry and see if I can create a "master" reg entry that would handle all of my various configurations. Oh well, I guess this step will remain a manual step in my process until I figure something out. thanks.

Does anybody know of a good way to sort the icons in the Quick Launch toolbar? I read a while back a method that involved moving all the links out of the QuickLaunch folder and then adding them back 1 by 1 with a pause between the moves [to allow Windows to realize a change had been made]. I had that in my process when I was doing SP1 and I believe it was working. I have since moved onto SP2 and the process no longer works. I have thought about trying to use AutoIt but I can't think of a good way to select the icon that needs to be moved. Thanks in advance.

gdisk is available with your Ghost software from Symantec. It is no longer free. You can use WinImage to create a floppy image www.winimage.com. Also check out www.bootdisk.com you may get lucky and find a boot disk already made that will work or a good starting point.

I have done the gdisk reboot test in the past many years ago. I believe I relied on checking the C: drive's label. I do remember using some other tool and redirecting it's output to check the state of C: but I can't remember anymore. I will try and find my old bootdisk. I may still have a copy somewhere. Since you don't have CD drives on most your PCs and you are on a network... look into PXE booting your computers. That way you don't even need to carry floppies around. john

I do a network-based install for WinXP that starts with an HTA screen that prompts the installer for any information that I want to be variable. You could write a quick file [pick your language] that prompts for the information and then does a search/replace inside your unattend.txt file. john

My first suggestion... look at the Microsoft Business Desktop Deployment solution. It will get you up and running for a network-based install in no time. The documentation refers to using a WinPE boot disk. You can substitute a BartPE boot disk instead. I did and created my own plugin to launch the HTA file Microsoft uses to start their build. If you want to continue with your current setup. You should add a drive letter to your winnt.exe line. Change: \i386\winnt.exe /s:\i386 /u:\i386\unattend.txt to \i386\winnt.exe /s:q:\i386 /u:q:\i386\unattend.txt I don't believe winnt.exe knows where to pick up your unattend.txt file. If you read the help for winnt.exe it states you need to specify full path using a drive letter for \\server\share form. If that doesn't work... move away from your network bootdisk and switch to a bootable CD [bartPE] so that you can use winnt32.exe. I haven't had a problem with it yet. @telenut -- I don't believe the partition you are defining with gdisk will be visible without a reboot. That is why I use a BartPE CD so that I can run DISKPART.exe from Microsoft. I don't believe DISKPART can be run in 16-bit mode -- you could try. The advantage to DISKPART is that the created partition is availabe for use when you exit DISKPART. Again, Microsoft's BDD solution has the DISKPART script file included in it. john

the /background is just for msn.

@Northwood - I do a lot of work with unattended installs of Windows XP off a network share. I have used Microsoft's BDD solution as a starting point. It should help you get past your initial problems you are having. You can find the BDD solution at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopde...ddoverview.mspx Download the Standard Edition -- it should suffice to get you started. Let me know if you have any further questions. john

You can add a variable for a user to: HKCU\Environment there should be an entry for TMP and TEMP already in there. You do not need to use REG_EXPAND_SZ. You can add a variable for the System to: HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment The GUI interface can be reached by going to Control Panel | System | Advanced | Environment Variables button. John

@Caycep - I have never worked with XP Home edition but do a lot of work with XP Pro and Sysprep for my company. What you want to do should be possible. Do you have Sysprep.exe and sysprep.inf along with the couple other support files it wants in the directory c:\sysprep? The directory must be c:\sysprep and the sysprep.inf must be called such. Also, you didn't mention which SP you are running but SP2 released a new version of sysprep - SP1's version of sysprep will NOT work with SP2. John