Silvereyes

That's the problem. If one is entitled to use a VLK key, one should probably know what VLK means. VLK is used in companies while nLite is for private fun only (it's in its EULA). That's true with one exception. Anyone, organisation or private individual can buy a VLK license. I haven't bought 'one' for a while as we're almost entirely Ubuntu Linux these days but they were available in quantities as low as 5 licenses and you could add to that by simply purchasing more licenses as you needed them. This may have changed as I haven't had a lot of contact with our former Microsoft rep since I refused to take the 'bribes' he was offering us to stay stick with Microsoft products. He even offered a 'special sweetener' if I'd dump the Linux servers and use Windows Server instead That wasn't going to happen of course. With changeover and training costs we saved over seventy thousand pounds in the first year and nearly three times that each year since. Not having to fix problems caused by staff fiddling with things or virus infections from porn and warez sites every five minutes was simply icing on the cake

Sunbelt Personal Firewall - BSOD in khips.sys during boot. Halo 2 - Seems ok so far.

That's the whole point Culberti. He doesn't make his specific requirements clear but it's obvious from his post that he is a complete novice in this area. That's why I suggested a tool suitable for a complete novice, I don't believe a Ghost/DeployCentre combi is. Nor a PE based solution. I certainly didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition

Interesting variation on 'simple', particularly the way you picked my comment apart with a fine toothed comb. The point I was trying to make was that the tools you suggested might be bit more than he needed or wanted at this stage. Scripting and/or remote deployment is fine if you have a large number of machines to maintain but if you only have two or three it's really not worth the effort (or the cost). I use PXE boot and remote deployment at work but with only three machines at home it's easier to just pop the CD in and reboot. As for the prices, well yes, you can usually find the same thing cheaper elsewhere if you look for it.

Whoa!!! Steady on there Oleg. This is a forum not a battlefield. All the original poster wanted was a simple answer to a simple question. Not a lecture on the Rights of Man. And probably not a debate on the merits of various tools either so I shall refrain from commenting any further on the matter except to post those prices you asked about. Ghost $69.99 Ghost Solution Suite $39.20 per license (min 5 - $196) Acronis True Image 11 Home $49.99 PS: I would hate to think your objection was simply because Acronis use an 'embedded' Linux solution

Hmm... Pop in a CD and have it overwrite your system partition without any further intervention. That's a really, really clever idea Seriously, he didn't mention have the tool do it automagically, just the ability to do what most of us have been doing for many years, system image backup and restore. I suggested True Image as I feel it's the best choice for a novice who has never had any experience in drive/partition imaging before. The documentation for True Image Home is fairly clear. Creating the rescue CD for backing up and restoring a system image is simply a matter of running the media creation tool and selecting the options required. Burn it, pop it in the drive, reboot and you're ready to go. It supports the full range of imaging options - disk/partition to and from image file, disk and partition. It supports writing and reading image files from CD/DVD burners, USB hard disks and flash drives, network shares etc. It's cheaper than both of those you mention and a lot simpler than grope4dros Seriously, what's not to like for a novice?

Ermmm... I think you are going to have to explain a little more clearly before any of us can help you. Where are you trying to input your XP product key? nLite Unattended settings dialog? XP install? Something weird and wonderful?

There are several tools which can do this but Acronis True Image is certainly the best of them at present. http://www.acronis.com/

The generic definition for an embedded system is a dedicated/single purpose computer system. The hardware on which it is based is largely irrelevant. In the case you mention the base operating system was probably XP Embedded but I would advise you to avoid this as it's pretty nasty even by Microsoft's appalling standards. For the requirements you give at the end, (2 CD/DVDs etc.), the best solution would be a Linux LiveCD + Stepmania. This won't be perfect but as I said earlier, most people simply won't tamper with it because it isn't windows. Even so, any solution is going to expose your system to tampering regardless of what you do but the threat of "viri from memory cards" is media hype. There is a much greater threat from email and hostile websites.

This sounds like a job for an embedded system type O/S. It might be possible to use something like Bart-PE but this may not support the APIs needed by stepmania and would still allow access to your hard disks etc. Alternately, have you considered using the Linux version with a LiveCD? In addition to the technical aspects there would also be a psychological barrier to tampering simply because it's not windows

The main different is that nLite is a pre-installation customization tool while XPLite is a post installation configuration tool. It's also very expensive unless you're buying 100+ units.

Hi Paralityk, Sorry about the delay in getting back to you on this. I've been busy Obviously I didn't make myself completely clear. "My Music" is not defined in the installation hives. You can only get to it after installation. I would suggest creating an .INF file and execute it using RunOnceEx. The cmdlines.txt file is used to execute programs during an unattended installation. The MSFN unattended installation guide can explain both of these. Also, have you considered using VMware Player and Daemon Tools to test your installation disc images before burning them to physical media. It's quicker and easier then having to burn a disc then test it. It will also save on discs even if you are using rewritable media. I hope this has been of more help.

Two of these settings are defined within HIVEDEF.INF and can be altered by using a custom .INF file from CMDLINES.TXT to change the appropriate registry keys. HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders","Personal",0x00020000,"%USERPROFILE%\My Documents" HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders","My Pictures",0x00020000,"%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Pictures" 'My Music' is defined within the Windows Mediaplayer Preferences and can be altered in the same way. HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences","CDRecordPath",0x00020000,"%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Music" You can also alter the first two manually by editing HIVEDEF.INF after nLite has finished tailoring the installation and before it creates/burns the image. Open HIVEDEF.INF in a text editor. Notepad can be used but it's not very good. Go directly to the end of the file and scroll up slowly until you find a block of 'U_SHELL_FOLDERS_' entries. U_SHELL_FOLDERS_PERSONAL="%USERPROFILE%\My Documents" U_SHELL_FOLDERS_MYPICTURES="%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Pictures"

I was aware of this but after a brief period of using diff/patch to handle these sort of changes I now avoid directly altering the hive files. As you are probably aware it can cause problems with slipstreaming and updates etc. A workaround would be to run patch after tailoring with nLite but any changes to this part of the nLite profile can cause it to fail.

This is a known issue. I've always assumed that the key is being overwritten at a later stage of the installation but I've never had the time to actually track down precisely where it is happening. The only thing I can offer is the method I use which is to change the key using a .INF file from RunOnceEx.