Muppet Hunter

I've just read Martin's post about KB967715 and I think that the same argument applies to the XP version of the hotfix. However, an additional reason for not describing the XP update as junk is as follows :- KB967715 updates shell32.dll to version 6.0.2900.5622 and since hfslip uses the QFE version of this update it would effectively include the fix from KB949860 (shell32.dll version 6.0.2900.5555). KB949860 cures the longstanding windows explorer update bug which is most often seen if you use 'run as' to run Windows Exporer as admin for the purposes of carrying out maintenance. Without this hotfix automatic refresh would normally be impaired so that files/folders don't appear or disappear when moving/copying/deleting etc. Dialog boxes relying on the explorer shell which are called from within programs run under different user credentials are also affected. I'm not sure if 2k was affected by this bug because KB949860 only applied to XP.

i8042prt.sys is handled by a call to msmouse.inf in the synpd.inf file. Anyway, looking at the last session.ini it looks like Birds is trying to install the generic Synaptics v10.1.8 drivers onto a new Kogan Agora linux netbook. There are no Windows drivers provided for it, so either get newer ones like at the link I posted, or use the default XP drivers. The generic drivers seem to be causing the problem.

It looks like you're having problems with the generic Synaptics driver and you could have a look at a newer one and see if it installs. I also think you might be getting a conflict from the Synaptics USB filter driver synhid.inf and you probably want just the PS2 synpd.inf. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss...ocid=MIGR-42487

It seems a bit premature to consider dropping IE7 support just after IE8 gets released. Wouldn't it be better to wait a bit longer for any (potential) issues in IE8 to get ironed out? I vote to keep supporting both versions for the time being.

In my experience expanding setup files is usually not worth the hassle unless maybe you're installing on very old hardware. It's a CPU and memory issue which most hardware from the last few years can cope with. I'm not sure that the extra time spent expanding the files is worth any gains from a faster install. Has anyone benchmarked this? I think that the noload script probably has a similar effect to using nLite to remove the unnecessary drivers so that they don't load.

Alan_K The hotfixes included in SP3 will be listed on the MS site when SP3 is officially released. As far as I know IE7 doesn't get updated at all by SP3, see here http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPo...1&SiteID=17 although I've read different things on this It might be worth checking out HFSLIP as it generally does a better job of slipstreaming (particularly IE and WMP) and the folks there usually sort these kind things out much better.

I have read on here that HFSLIP does a much better job of updating WMP and IE, and is a bit more clever in general. As I understand things, it checks the version numbers of individual files and only updates with the newest versions. It might be less hassle not having to worry about the order in which to apply updates and worth looking at.

I think XP originally came with .net 1.1 and SP3 probably updates this version with all the latest 1.1 hotfixes, I suppose to 1.1 SP1 or whatever the latest SP version is. The Wikipedia section on the .net framework is probably worth reading. .Net can't be integrated, just silently installed.

This is worth a read as there's a lot of rubbish talked on the subject - Understanding Virtual Memory and Running XP with the pagefile disabled. Something worth considering is putting the pagefile on a separate hard drive.

fdv It's a while since I tried to set up NT4 (including hacking all the infs) although I'm not sure why I had the problem installing onto ntfs. Anyway, I've read about (but not used) PE's and they do seem to be good for things like formatting, partitioning (and even defragging). At the moment I use linux-based LiveCDs like Parted Magic and Clonezilla for preparing and backing up my drives - they've really started to become viable recently. I think Parted Magic uses linux-ntfs to create the filesystem and it supports ntfs v4 and later, but I'm not sure if it does this out of the box (ie command line switches are probably needed). I think ntfs-3g supports v4 too iirc. You're probably right regarding the SDK tools, but I'm sure a lot of programmers are just slack or lazy in not supporting 9X and NT4. I suppose NT4 compatible software might need to become a separate thread, but a lot of stuff these days doesn't support anything below 2K. Sadly it looks like Firefox 3 has gone down this route, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#Backend_changes. Opera still explicitly supports Windows 95 btw

fdv A good defragger for NT4 can be found here http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/ The best defragger I've found (and I've tried loads over the years) is JKDefrag (http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/) which supports all sorts of optimisation methods. Although it only works on Windows 2000 and later, it could be made to work on NT4 according to the program's author in this thread on their forum. As the program is open source, it's surely got to be a subproject for someone profficient in C programming. As an aside, I'm sure NT4 won't install on preformatted ntfs but instead converts from FAT after you pick the partition at install. Also, I seem to remember that the default ntfs cluster size is less than 4k (2k iirc) and the only solution I know of is to use Partition Magic boot media to resize the clusters up to 4k. It would be good if anyone knew of a way round these limitations. MH

I'm getting the same error on Server 2003 (SP2). I'll probably end up installing the old fashioned way by running the installer once Windows has been set up

I understand that the general desktop performance of xp and 2003 is very similar. Another advantage of 2003 is that the support period is substantially longer before M$ ultimately pull the plug

This problem is still here in 1.4 beta, but the solution is the same. I'm not sure of how to automate the solution, but I'd guess you'd put them in the keepbox or a $oem$\$$\system32 folder on the root of your cd and run a command/batch file or something at first boot. Is there any way that gpedit.dll and gptext.dll could be left in even if you removed group policy editor to keep compatibility? Could the option to remove local security policy editor be configured to remove these files instead?

Hello again, Lots of the tweaks seem to not work and you find yourself doing some things manually after an install. Sometimes some services which you set to disabled come out as automatic on first boot (tip - leave these alone and manually alter after installing). I think that if you press Num Lock on and reboot, then windows remembers this and it comes on automatically thereafter. Copy the following (without begin and end) into Notepad and save it as NumLock.reg, then double-click or right-click, merge. This gives you control over which keys are switch on as you can see below. Hope this helps and I hope your unattended install went well too. -begin- Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard] "InitialKeyboardIndicators"="2" -end- 0 - all indicators off 1 - Caps Lock on 2 - Num Lock on 4 - Scroll Lock on 3 - Caps Lock and Num Lock on 5 - Caps Lock and Scroll Lock on 6 - Num Lock and Scroll Lock on 7 - Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock on

No issues here, I might get round to using hfslip again once the updates start rolling in. I managed to nLite the whole install too with few problems.

I think that Computer Name and Full Name are required, just enter something like 'Computer' and 'MH'. I leave Workgroup blank (it automatically becomes WORKGROUP) and I think that the computer name can contain a space in XP and later (I'm not sure about 2k). An Administrator account is always necessary, although you can rename it, and deactivating the Guest account is a good idea for security. Hope this helps.

The problem is solved if you copy gpedit.dll and gptext.dll into the system32 folder and run regsvr32 on them. It seems that if you remove the Group Policy Management Console then these two files get removed, and this breaks Local Security Policy.

I've done a bit of Googling and have come across a couple of sites that mention that certain dll's need to be registered if you're getting the above problem. Here http://briandesmond.com/blog/archive/2006/...g-on-Vista.aspx talks about getting Win 2K3 Admin Tools working on Vista, so I copied all dll's to System32 and registered them all. This didn't fix the problem. I later found this page http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft...um=17&hl=en and did the same as before. This worked and Local Security Policy is as before. Missing/unregistered dll's appear to be at fault, probably the ones listed on the second site (below). This might possibly be an nLite problem and if so would be a fairly major problem if anyone else were affected. appmgmts.dll appmgr.dll certmgr.dll dskquota.dll fdeploy.dll fde.dll gpedit.dll gptext.dll iedkcs32.dll ieaksie.dll ipsecsnp.dll rigpsnap.dll scecli.dll wsecedit.dll Of these files the following were completely missing from my (nLited) install CD (not even in any of the CAB's) :- appmgr.dll certmgr.dll dskquota.dll gpedit.dll gptext.dll ieaksie.dll iedkcs32.dll After copying and registering, the files below were under mmc.exe in Process Explorer (after running secpol.msc). certmgr.dll gpedit.dll gptext.dll ipsecsnp.dll scecli.dll wsecedit.dll

I'd guess that 2003 is a bit quicker from what I've read, but I haven't seen any benchmarks. nLited 2003 runs just like XP from my experience.

I'm using 1.3 final and opted to keep Local Security settings, yet when clicking on Local Security Policies in Administrative Tools the window comes up with the message 'MMC could not create the snap-in'. I've never had this mess up before, so I'm guessing that something's gone wrong between version 1.0.1 and 1.3 (1.2 never worked for me and I didn't try the 1.3 betas). I'm using W2K3 SP2, last session.ini attached. BTW keep up the good work! Last_Session.ini

I was getting similar BSOD's using 1.2.1 with all at default and have only just managed to install with 1.3. It's probably safer to leave them at default and adjust them after installing. Strangely, I used to remove App Lookup and just left it in and it's installed successfully (Win 2k3), so maybe this service is causing a problem. You'll end up spending longer figuring out which ones are to blame than leaving them alone!

Anyone? There's been two new releases since, have these bugs been sorted out yet? Have they been acknowledged?

I googled the msconfig error and it pointed to a Zonealarm issue. Not sure if this helps you though. I've also read that update packs can cause issues and you have tons of those. Maybe just try integrating windows hotfixes and essentials first of all. I had problems with the latest 1.2.1 and went back to 1.0.1 which worked fine. Best of luck mate.

Seems like there are a few bugs in 1.2.1. Attached is the last session.ini which is from using 1.0.1 (with an almost identical configuration) which has worked perfectly. Something has been changed between versions which is breaking the whole thing for at least me Setup couldn't find the install files on the CD before and this is a pretty major bug along with the blue screening. Last_Session.ini