royalbox

If "Default User" is the profile template used to create new users, what is "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile"? Also, is HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT the "default User" NTUSER.DAT? Many thanks for any help. EDIT: Re my previous post: I think some settings didn't work because the inf file data type entry was 0x00020002, which I believe has the "no clobber" bit flag set so that it will not change the value if it exists. I changed it to 0x00020000 and it worked this time. However, a lot of folders were created in the original locations as well.

@GreenMachine OK thanks. Most settings work when imported except the visual effects which I disable most of. Things like animated windows, shadows, fades and slides... that sort of thing. I tried changing some settings in the HIVEDEF.INF before building the CD. I changed some shell folder locations and again, some worked, some didn't.

jbm, Thanks a lot, I'll give it a go then. At the moment I've got a more critical problem where I get an error during setup: "can't load a file needed for setup" or something similar. I'ts driving me nuts at the moment. Thanks again.

@locobox Sorry I didn't reply to this, I got sidelined and I haven't tried it yet. @all Is there any problem loading the default registry hive and adding settings from the cmdlines.txt stage of setup? Many thanks. EDIT: I suppose there is no way to load the hive then. Maybe the answer is to edit the HIVEDEF.INF file directly beforehand. any problems doing this?

A quote from ms Everyone clear on that? Unbelievable.

@locobox You know, I thought I'd be flooded with replies pointing to something quite obvious. I still haven't got it to work -- glad I'm not the only one. EDIT: Perhaps it only happens to forum members with 'box' in their names

@jbm Quite sure. I have reg files for different things like services, visual effects, Taskbar & Start Menu etc. Still, I did a search though all the files for one of the settings that didn't work just to make sure, and it only appears in one file. I just don't understand it. Thanks again.

@Dahi I'm calling a .cmd file that then calls any reg files it finds. @jbm I have that setting at the top of one of my reg files (Visual Effects.reg). Thanks for trying though. @all Any ideas welcome.

@jbm and @all I'm really confused now. I just checked the install again and it seems that some of the current user tweaks 'are' working, while others are not. Example. This didn't work: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] "MinAnimate"="0" Nor this: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "DragFullWindows"="0" Whereas others like this did: ;--------------------------------------- ; control panel -- display as a menu ;--------------------------------------- [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "Start_ShowControlPanel"=dword:00000002 Any ideas?

@jbm I appreciate your help, but if it were the batch command that was wrong then none of the tweaks would have been applied. As it is, it's just the current user ones. Thanks anyway.

I tried again with regedit /s and still none of the current user tweaks took. I tried creating a new account after installation as well and still no tweaks were applied. The local machine settings were applied. Has anyone any idea what I'm doing wrong? cmdlines.txt: "tweaks.cmd" "useraccounts.cmd" tweaks.cmd: for %%i in ("TWEAKS\*.reg") do ( regedit /s "%%i" ) Many thanks.

@DigeratiPrime That's what I did so I must have done something else wrong as the settings didn't take. Thanks for confirming that this is the right way to do it, I'll try again. EDIT: Ah, I see what I've done. I used reg import instead of regedit /s. Don't ask me why. Thanks again.

Well I must say I am surprised. I thought this was going to be one of those easy questions, but it seems as though no-one knows the answer. Isn't anybody adding custom registry tweaks to their unattended CDs to, say, change or remove their wallpaper for example? This seems very strange.

This is really bugging me now. How do I add user specific registry entries during setup? I've tried running a batch file from cmdlines.txt with both HKEY_CURRENT_USER and .DEFAULT entries but none of the settings take. Thanks for any help.

Thanks a lot Coolsights2000. Just to be sure, Can I create an account straight after adding the entries to HKEY_CURRENT_USER without rebooting?

A bit of help wanted please. I had assumed that if you used the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT key to add registry tweaks, then they would be applied to any new user created. I tried this and none of the tweaks were applied. I want to add the registry tweaks to an unattented disc using cmdlines.txt but I've only ever been able to get the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE tweaks to work. What should I be doing? Many thanks.

Thanks again greenmachine, I did this and it seemed to go ok. I haven't done an install yet though. I didn't even know about the 2.8 update until you mentioned it. Thanks again.

So I get this absolutely right, you just add Q823718_MDAC_SecurityPatch on the 'packaged files' screen, and what command line do you add on the next screen? How do you know which command line to use? Sorry about this greenmachine but I seem to have a blind spot here.Many thanks.

Ok, thanks aaronxp and greenmachine for the replies. I'll have a look at this IExpress thing, I did see you talk about this elsewhere. thanks again, Royalbox.

I'm a little unsure of a couple of hotfixes here. I haven't been following this from the start so forgive give. Q817778.EXE I don't have anything with 817778, would that be xp pro only do you think? Q823718_MDAC_SecurityPatch @Greenmachine You have this down as going to your HFTYPE0 folder. Is this using the batch file aaronxp mentions at the top of this thread? He also says you can run it from guirunonce, is that no good in this case? Thanks for any help.

Nice work greenmachine! You've put a lot of effort and research into sorting out problems with various hotfixes. I wish microsoft could have had some sort of standard for all it's hotfixes so there wouldn't be any need for the workarounds but that's probably asking too much. Anyway, thanks for all the help you gave me with my version. I'm going to 'retire' it now to save any confusion and also, I'm at the limit of my batch scriting ability now anyway! Thanks again, Royalbox.

I've just read the microsoft article regarding the [ForceCopyDriverCabFiles] in dosnet.inf. It strikes me that if you add the updated file names to this section then there is no need to update driver.cab as the whole idea, as far as I see it, is so that the updated files are used rather than the ones in driver.cab. If on the other hand you updated the files in driver.cab then it's ok to use them anyway so there would be no need to add them to [ForceCopyDriverCabFiles]. Would that not be the case? I started adding a section to my script to update dosnet.inf as greenmachine suggested but realized I need to give it some more thought. If you do all your hotfixes at once there is no problem but if you later just add 1 or 2 to update the i386 folder (the output folder my script uses) then dosnet.inf will just contain these new file names and all the file names from previous hotfixes will no gone. You might say why not just 'add' the file names to the existing updated dosnet.inf? Well, the [OptionalSrcDirs] section has to be added to dosnet.inf so the file names would be added to this section at the end of the file and not the [ForceCopyDriverCabFiles] section. Obviously this would mess things up. I don't want to rely on 3rd party apps to do search and replace either. Any ideas on that welcome.

@AaronXP Ok, many thanks for the info. @everyone I've updated the script yet again so that it now automatically updates dosnet.inf, as greenmachine was saying previously, with the required... [OptionalSrcDirs] svcpack I don't like copying other peoples ideas if I can help it but this is one more thing the end user of the script has to worry about so I put it in. I hope you don't mind greenmachine.

@aaronxp, I misunderstood the message above, I thought you were posting a new script. If you still want to take a look, my script download is here. I've included a readme file. Greenmachine is more switched-on with windows setup that I am, but the script does work well for type 1 hotfixes (except KB817778) and has type 2 support if anyone wants to try it, sp1.cab and driver.cab update and hotfix renaming.

OK, I was going to remove my script to avoid confusion as I thought aaronxp was going to post a script on his site but I completely misunderstood. I've updated mine again to include 'driver.cab updating' as suggested by greenmachine. I tested this and saw many files getting updated so it should be worthwhile, though I haven't installed xp with it yet. I enjoy working on this when time allows and will continue doing so until someone posts a better one. (probably greenmachine as he knows a lot more about how windows setup works than me!). @greenmachine or aaronxp Forgetting about slipstreaming for the moment, what was the problem with instaling service packs using the $oem$ folder that caused the info to be moved from the site? I don't get much time to look through all the posts at the moment. Many thanks. @greenmachine Removing the /q switch and just using /n /u /z, was that just so you can see what was happening during installation? I take it there is still no user interaction required? Thanks again.