royalbox

@greenmachine Thanks! A lot of info there to read, looks like you've done your homework on it! I'll probably just wait now until aaronxp publishes it and try it out, but I'll have a look at those links anyway just out of interest. Thanks again for all your help on this over the past few weeks.

@[superhumaN][dhc] I've spent some time doing a couple of clean installs today to check. I got the message as well but it didn't say which hotfix it was. Thanks for sorting out which hotfix caused the problem (and greenmachine). did you mean KB817778.exe? What did you change the switches to? As far as only some hotfixes showing in add/remove, well I'm not sure why any should show up as they're all instaled with the /n switch which should stop them being backed-up. 3 showed up for me as well. If you use qfecheck.exe (download from microsoft -- and slipstream it!) it shows all hotfixes are installed, it did for me anyway. A visit to windows update should show that as well. Perhaps someone (greenmachine?) could shed some light on the Q817778 / KB817778.exe problem. Thanks for tracking it down..

Me too, got something happening with it I need to get to the bottom of first... EDIT: Leaving it to greenmachine

Do you mean when you're running start.cmd or when your installing xp?

@greenmachine Sorry, I was getting mixed up between the problem with the sp1.cab and the renaming thing. I've just tried your script again and it does indeed work. It does seem the best renaming idea for type 1 hotfixes, though I'd have to change my script about a bit. I keep changing it anyway! I have a version that works on each cab at a time deleting files and folders copying cat and hotfixes, compressing etc and then moving on to the next one. I'd have to change the way things are added to svcpack.inf though and haven't had time to do it. I'll get round to it. The thing is I want to cut out as many unnecessary file copying and other steps as possible. Anyway, your renaming does work now, I don't know what was happening before. Thanks again.

@GreenMachine ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION didn't make it work. I don't understand it fully but apparantly: I haven't looked into it that much though. Thanks for the suggestion though.

@Sunil That's nice to hear, thanks. @specialk Not at all, I'm glad you pointed it out. Others might just not bother saying anything and people that use it would have a duff sp1.cab. I still cannot understand why it ignores that 'if not exist etc\sp1\*.* though. I'm baffled by that.

@specialk Thanks for pointing that out, I've worked around it and updated the download (1st post) though I don't understand why it's doing it. both... if not exist etc\sp1\* goto _svcinf if not exist etc\sp1\*.* goto _svcinf ...are ignored despite no files being there. Strange. Anyway I worked around it by adding a file extention... if not exist etc\sp1\*.sys goto _svcinf ...which works here. Anyone using an older version without sp1.cab files present should use this version instead! Thanks again specialk.

@greenmachine I still have the same problem which is a shame because this is such a good idea. The problem is with one hotfix (there's always one isn't there?) which is called Q815021_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe and is the one with ntdll.dll in. Yes that's right, the little so and so that I had to add an extra section of code for so it would copy it uncompressed to i386 AND system32 -- pointed out by spheris. It has 2 cat files and when you run your script you end up with 2 exe files named after each cat file. kb815021.exe and q815021.exe. Now it probably doesn't matter as it would just try and install it twice, but maybe there would be a problem I don't know. It's just annoying. The trouble is my brains fried as I've been working on moving a website for someone as well which needs links changed etc. So I think I'll give it a break for a couple of days. I wish I was better at this code stuff then I could sort it out!

Does anone have any idea why this doesn't work for mrchisholm? mrchisholm, I've uploaded an update that you could try. It now no longer needs to make a $tmp$.cmd. Try it and see if it helps. Remember there should be no spaces in the path so c:\file with spaces\xpcd\ doesn't work. I cannot get compress.exe to work like this even when "quoted". There are a lot of error messages like 'file not found...' at the start when it renames the hotfixes. I haven't found a way round this yet with the rename method I'm using. It doesn't matter though, the files will be renamed. @greenmachine I really like your idea of renaming hotfixes with the cat file. I tried your idea in a modified version of my script and it seemed to work well for hotfixes type 1. Then I found that hotfix Q815021 has 2 cat files kb815021.cat and q815021.cat. What it seems to do is add the hotfix twice with both names. I tried it with type 2 hotfixes including MPSetupXP.exe (I'm not sure if this one is a good candidate for slipstreaming though I expect not!) and it has several cat files and the hotfix was named to all of them. I must admit I didn't try it with your whole script just the rename bit. I'm sure there's a way to get it to use just one file if more are found, I'l have a look at your script to see if I've missed something. Talking of hotfixes, KB329441.exe's cat file is named q329441.cat in case anyone's troubleshooting. I thought I had a missing cat file for a while. [superhumaN][dhc] Can you tell me a bit more about the errors you're getting and when. Does any of it work up to a point? Does it create the folders and extract the hotfixes? I'll try and work out what's wrong if I can. I'm sorry if this doesn't work for anyone, I don't know about os's or systems other than my own. All I know is that It works everytime here using an English XP SP1 setup. I'l try and help but bare what I just said it mind.

@mrchisholm I can't understand it. Did you add... [OptionalSrcDirs] svcpack ... to your dosnet.inf? Is your distributionpoint xp with service pack 1? Erm, anyone else have any ideas?

@greenmachine That's interesting, I'd never have thought of renaming the hotfixes that way. I suppose it doesn't really matter what the hotfix is called so using either of the cat files in a hotfix that has 2 would work. Nice idea. I don't know, but I suppose you could run any silently installed app from svcpack. Do you mean have a folder you put these files in and the script will copy them to svcpack and add them to the [setupHotfixesToRun] section and add any necessary switches? I expect you'd have to have different switches for different apps though. I've been using the $oem$ method of installing directx and other apps as per aaronxp's guide. Personally I just use the script for files that I want intergrated into the 'cd' as it were. I'll have to look into it.

@mrchisholm I did have the full path added to all folders and quoted "" but took that out as I thought it wasn't necessary. I'll make a version with the full path added to all folders (as it used to be) and see if it works with spaces in the path. I'll let you know. The scvpack.inf should be compressed along with all the other files and places in i386. Look for svcpack.in_. If it's not there (!) please can you let me know? Thanks.

Oops, sorry! I think I've got it now could you try downloading again and let me know please? I left a '\' in where it shouldn't have been and left a " out as well. I've been changing the code a bit you see.

@Tbone2 Yes sorry, it's the same link. @hfa71 What happens, is there a message?

I've posted an updated version. I changed the code a bit here and there and added some messages while the work is taking place so you can see what's going on. Any problems or improvements please post here. Thanks. By the way, I've remembered where I got compress.exe from. It was from the wincdman script. This does a similar thing plus makes an iso and burning etc. I originally tried to extract the code for the hotfix bit but it was too intergrated and quite confusing and didn't seem to work properly so I gave up and started from scratch.

@mahowi I don't know where it came from now it was so long ago! I'm sure it was together with cabarc and extract. I could change the code to make the new version work but anyone using the old version would find it stopped working for them. I could make a choice where you enter which one you have but then it gets too complicated and messy. I want to keep the script small and easy. I've been trying to find a freeware replacement for it but without luck so far. I thought makecab was the answer until I discovered it changes the file date to the current date which makes checking for newer versions of a file unreliable. The reason I used zx21 by the way is that it gives files the same compression as the original files on the cd (comparing the same file versions of course), so I assume this is what microsoft used. Try downloading the current version of my script, that will help until I sort out what to do (!).

1 step forward, 2 steps back. I've abandoned makecab.exe and am using compress.exe again. Makecab renames the files to today's date and doesn't check if file is newer or not. compress.exe from 2003 reskit needs a slightly different code to run it. I've left the old version in until I can come up with something better.

I updated the script to fix the ntdll.dll problem thanks to Spheris. I Wasn't sure if you could move/copy a file to two destinations at once in the same line of code. So I did two (well why not, lets splash out a bit). I also ditched compress.exe in favour of makecab.exe. I tried this originally but couldn't get it to work for some reason but I saw Sunil's post and thought I'd try again as compress.exe from 2003 reskit won't work as I need it to and I believe everone has makecab.exe already (is that right?) I haven't burn't a cd and installed with it yet, but I can't see there being a problem with it. If there is, please do tell.

@Spheris NTDLL...oh yeah! Thanks for the info, I'll change the script later tonight. No , I wouldn't leave the hotfixes out of svcpack. I think that's been mentioned elswhere as a way to speed-up installation but I don't agree with it. @greenmachine Right-ho thanks, it's about the same time then, that's good enough for me I say. I'm not sure whether to remove or comment-out 'hotfix 2' form 'RHSM' altogether with all the problems mentioned. Pretty coloured icons are for girls anyway, surely?

Ok Tbone2 thanks. Actually, it would be interesting to get a direct comparison using the same hotfixes and no other differences to compare the time between the two. If anyone's bored (!) and wants to try it please post the result.

Tbone2, was that using the exact same hotfixes for both methods can you remember?

Thanks Tbone2. Nice to hear that it works. I don't know why webmedics one didn't work for you though. I'm still very wary about doing any hotfixes that go into hf2, I have to emphasize that. It does take ages to install doesn't it? I don't know whether it's quicker when you do it the the %oem% way, I haven't tried that with all the hotfixes. There's only so many times you can keep installing windows to try things without drving yourself nuts! Can anyone say whether it's quicker that way? If so, a solution would be to slipstream the files, leave the cat files in svcpack but remove the hotfixes from there and the reference to them in svcpack.inf and install them using the %oem% method outlined by AaronXP. As greenmachine has said in another thread, I personally wouldn't chance not installing them at all even when slipstreamed because there must be a reason why microsoft's guide tells you to do this. Thanks again.

@Mike500, Q323255 came up for me on windows update a couple of days ago with a new install. I have xp home sp1. 822603 is a recommended update, I don't think those are being included.

@Sunil One source I've found is the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools which is a 12MB download! EDIT: This won't work with the code as it is. If anyone knows any other legal place to get it please let us know. I don't want to distribute microsoft files and risk geting me or this forum into trouble. @GreenMachine Hows it going! I'm with you on this one. I think doing what microsoft themselves suggest must be ok, but I'm getting more and more warey about doing the other hotfixes this way. Even the sp1.cab is a concern. @Spheris Yep, I may remove or at least comment out hf2 altogether and play it safe. thanks.