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.

Take a look at this post I made a few weeks back. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...st&p=658511 This gives you all the info you need to automagically change both names and default icons for all of the 'standard' desktop icons during the install. If you need help with the .INF file structure then let me know and I'll post that as well.

In the end it's all down to how the project is managed. Most larger projects are divided into sections with one individual or team being responsible for each section. I've produced some very high quality software in this way and some absolute disasters. One of the most enduring problems I've had over the years is getting programmers to stick to the specifications. Almost all of them have a "better way" to do something or think something requested by the client "won't work" or "isn't necessary". With a project like nLite where a sole developer has absolute and undiluted control, the quality of the product reflects the skills and dedication of the individual. Compare this with one case I had where an individual programmer didn't like the interface specification he'd been given and wrote his own. Naturally this meant his work wasn't compatible with that being done by others and to compound matters he refused to rectify this stating that everyone else should use his design as it was "much better than that s**t". Rectifying that put us three months behind schedule which didn't look good at project review meetings. I didn't tell the client this of course I explained he had fallen ill and had to be replaced while quietly (and desperately) trying to get senior management to take the matter seriously.

VMware player is also free and works well in 1GB. I personally use Workstation 5.5.1 which is a bit more resource intensive due to all the extra bells and whistles but still works well in 1GB. I can run multiple virtual machines with a mixture of Windows and Linux guests. I must admit I've never tried VirtualBox but I have tried a number of other virtualization products and I keep coming back to VMware, they are definitely still the masters of the art at present. The only ones I would recommend you avoid are the Microsoft products. These are so slow I'm at a loss to understand how they could possibly think these are marketable. VMware also have another free product called Server but it's not really intended for 'workstation' style tasks. BTW: You can find a lot of support infomation on Ulli's site. I don't know if he still has the online vm creator as I haven't visited it for a while. http://sanbarrow.com/

Well, there's no sign of my comment so I guess it didn't get past his censorship after all I did take a look at those forums which NOTS3W mentioned and it really is 'his own little world' 74 Registered members, 153 Maximum and that was nearly 18 months ago.

Unfortunately the author appears to have shut down that project. Are there any similar efforts around? What about a repository of proven last_session.ini files? There appears to have been some 'concerns' over the authorship of some of the code he was using. I don't know the full details but it seems that he was being accused of stealing other people's work and using it without giving them proper credit. Pretty dumb if true. How difficult is it to say "Thanks to .... for their contributions" ?

If you are going to experiment with nLite then you really should get the free vmware player to test your completed ISOs before burning them to disc. It quicker, easier and considerable less wasteful. The vmware player cannot be used to create new virtual machines but there are a number of tools available to this. Also, it doesn't support snapshots but this is easily worked around if absolutely necessary. 1GB of RAM is fine for most purposes and more than enough for simply testing installations. Just create your virtual machine with the default 256MB. If you have problems with this then don't hesitate to post a query in the appropriate forum either here, or the vmware forums, but do try here first. There are a number of "Very Arrogant Arseholes" on the vmware forums who attack anyone who doesn't share their opinion.

hehe... I did say it was supposed to control the selection of the HAL. I also said it rarely works properly Ok. Some Questions... What are you using to check the system specification? Have you checked the Task Manager -> Performance tab? How many CPU Usage History graphs are shown? If windows is reporting it's an "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface PC" and you have two cpu graphs then I would suggest that there is no problem. That it's turned out exactly as you wanted.

Complicated. The primary benefit of the method I use is simplicity. Using the template given above, all that needs to be altered is the names and folders, the operating system does the rest. Also, this method works for W2k, W2k3 and XP. I don't know about Vista but I believe it still has the same inf based installer mechanism.

I've also noticed that he has Moderation turned on Let's see if my 'Carefully Reasoned Argument' , which incidently does mention XP Embedded and Windows PE, makes it through his censorship.

I'm reminded of a quote, the origin of which temporary escapes me. "You must be doing something right if they've started shooting at you." I've always taken this to mean that they are reduced to this because they've run out of legitimate objections.