_jd_

The official documentation doesn't specify if "UpdateUPHAL" supports multiple entries. It would be all too convenient if it did.

Little things seem to keep me from building an SP2 image... Last week I started getting "limited or no connectivity" messages on my master workstation while sysprep was running. At that point, sysprep just quits. No errors or other messages. I thought it was tied to the PC I was using as my master workstation, like a failing ethernet adapter, but i've since tried two other models of PC's, switched ethernet cables, switched data jacks and switched to another VLAN. Same problem. I've even rolled back my base unattended to a version that was previously working. Same problem. I spoke with one of our network admins and there have some recent changes to our DHCP config re: min/max timeouts, but it was simply moving the values from being a global setting to a per subnet setting. The workstation still shows a 24 hour lease. One of point of interest is that the three systems i've tried to use as master workstations all use the same Broadcom 57xx ethernet adapter... I can probably find a system that uses Intel Pro 100 but it will be a touch slower. Any other thoughts?

Hmm. Your sysprep.inf looks fine, maybe a few settings that were removed/depricated for SP2. I built my XPP SP2-based images on an "ACPI Uniprocessor" system and they restore fine on Intel P4 HT and Intel Core Duo systems that are "ACPI Multiprocessor". The processor type seems to be enumerated without issue during setup and the proper HAL is installed. I have no idea why your system is hitting safe-mode...

Hmm. If you built the image on the D810 (ACPI Uniprocessor HAL) then it should restore without issue on a system using the ACPI Multiprocessor HAL without any additional directives in sysprep.inf. Have you instructed sysprep to rebuilt the mass storage section?

On what system are you building the image?

mmarable: are you doing some sort of h/w detection to identify the particular model then change the HAL in sysprep.inf accordingly? i thought of using WinPE as well, just haven't got around to it. this is becoming an assue as Dual Core P4, Core Due and Core 2 Duo stuff is coming through the door.

I'm working on migrating my unattended installs/sysprep images from XPP SP1 to SP2 and i've noted something odd re: uniproccessor/multiprocesor HAL's. My XPP SP1 images would apply to P4-based systems that use either ACPI Uniprocessor (ACPIAPIC_UP) HAL or P4 HT-based systems that use APCI Multiprocessor (ACPIAPIC_MP) HAL. No problems. Everything was sorted after mini-setup completed and before the first user logged in. With XPP SP2 i'm seeing different behaviour. Applying an XPP SP2 sysprep image to a system that uses the ACPI Multiprocessor HAL results in a prompt on the first user login re: reboot to finish installing hardware. If I check setupapi.log the last device to be enumerated/installed was the HAL. I'm looking for a fix on this. I have clear direction that there are no be no prompts post-clone. Users are to be able to login cleanly to their workstation once it's up. I also want to avoid doing any automatic post-clone admin logins as well. Anyone else experiencing this w/ XPP SP2? If so, how are you dealing with it? I really don't want to build a second image for this... seems foolish. Thoughts? I'm working through some stuff at the moment just to test out a few hunches.

I did the same and have no problem dropping sysprep'd images on anything from Dell GX240/GX260's to brand new Intel Dual Core P4 and Core Duo systems. So many people, including management, were dead set on the HAL being the issue.

Another one... The Dell Dimension 2300 uses Intel's 845GL chipset. Head over to Intel and download the corresponding driver package. If you're just doing a manual install on a single system, go for the .exe package and install it manually. If you embedding in this your unattended installs or images, grab the .zip version as it's easier to extract.

Just visit Intel and download the driver pack for the chipset you're lokoing to support (i875P perhaps). Download the .zip developer version tho... it extracts nicely allowing you to put the driver files where you want.

In your txtsetup.sif, this could be a problem: [sourceDisksFiles.x86] iaStor.sys== 1,,,,,,_x,4,1 Two "=" signs...

No matching INF's in C:\WINDOWS\inf. I can't comment on creation of INFCACHE.1 in the driver directory as i'm populating the driver search path via registry... The system is a notebook with integrated GMA950 and the display adapter presents as two devices in device manager: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27A2\SUBSYS_30AA103C&REV_03\3&B1BFB68&0&10 PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27A6\SUBSYS_30AA103C&REV_03\3&B1BFB68&0&11 After cloning, the second device installs without issue under "Display adapters"as "Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset Set". The first device remains as "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)"... installing the device manually installs it the same as the second device. Both devices are using signed drivers obtained from Intel. Oddly enough, if I call sysprep with -pnp then both devices install without issue. So, i'm going to assume it's some sort of enumeration problem... not that I can explain it.

I ran into similiar "freezing" during mini-setup with the HP nc6120 under XPP SP1... cycling power allow mini-setup to continue. I did come accross an MS hotfix that may be related but haven't the time to test it out: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=883667

Well, with both "UpdateInstalledDrivers=Yes" and calling sysprep with -pnp, the Intel 945GM is installing without issue. I'm still seeing device related prompts during mini-setup tho and it appears to be the display... Any thoughts?

I'm working on adding support for the HP nc6320 to my unattended installs and images and it's presenting quite a challenge. Initally, the machine wouldn't boot with any of my earlier installs/images due to the SATA controller and that it was running in "native" mode. I resolved this by adding the Intel Storage Matrix drivers to TXTSETUP.SIF (put iastor.sys in \i386), as OEM drivers and to the [sysprepMassStorage] section of sysprep.inf. I've since moved on to the remaining drivers and believe I have accounted for each device... ~230MB worth. Hopefully I can slim that down a bit. If not, this single notebook will have doubled the size of my driver store... which was previously supporting 11 desktops and 1 notebook. I'm still having some issues with a few drivers... Bluetooth, HP's Quick Launch buttons and, believe it or not, the integrated Intel 945GM graphics (GMA950). I think i've sorted out the bluetooth/button drivers by adding "UpdateInstalledDrivers=Yes" to sysprep.inf ("DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore" is already there). I didn't have to do this with XP SP1, but this new install/image is based on XP SP2... I'm still having issues with the graphics drivers tho. Prior to installation, the 945GM graphics is represented by two entries in Device Manager named "Video Controller" and "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)". Only the first is being installed during mini-setup as "Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset Family" even tho I can install the second device manually after imaging and all of the driver files loaded are signed. Odd. Anyway, i'm dumping an image right now with the difference of having called sysprep with the -pnp switch... we'll see what that does.

I just did this in support of the SATA controller used in the HP nc6320, which uses Intel's "Matrix Storage Manager" driver. I accomplished this by editing both TXTSETUP.SIF and adding the drivers as OEM drivers. What SATA controller are you working?

Odd, the txtsetup.sif include on the XPP SP2 disc I used does contain a [Keyboard Layout] section. Anyway, I went through ~8 different configs of the regional settings in winnt.sif and including what you suggested (InputLocale=1009:1009,0c0c:11009) with no "KeyboardLayout" specified. That still put the "Canadian French" keyboard layout under the "English (Canada)" locale. Not what I want. I removed the "KeyboardLayout" definition from the "[unattended]" and i'm no longer getting french or multilingual keyboards under the english locales. Yay. A small win. The offshoot is that "English (US)" locale is back, which I understand is default behaviour that can be avoided via winnt.sif confg. Here's what I had in winnt.sif: [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1,2,3,4,5,6 InputLocale=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 InputLocale_DefaultUser=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 SystemLocale=1009 UserLocale=1009 UserLocale_DefaultUser=1009 I then used the hack you linked to to remove the US locale. For "Default User" the registry looked like this before applying the hack (#2 is the offending entry): [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload] "1"="00001009" "2"="00000409" "3"="00000c0c" I already have a .reg that I import during execution of cmdlines.txt, so I just added the following to configure "Default User": [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload] "1"="00001009" "2"="00000c0c" "3"=- Much to my satisfaction, when the install finished I was left with the following: English (Canada) - US French (Canada) - Canadian Multilingual Standard Unfortunately, it turns out that "Canadian Multilingual Standard" did not have an appropriate keyboard layout. Looking at the available keyboard layouts (microsoft.com/globaldev) the "Canadian French" layout is more applicable, so I swapped 0c0c:11009 for 0c0c:1009. My winnt.sif now contains this: [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1,2,3,4,5,6 InputLocale=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 InputLocale_DefaultUser=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 SystemLocale=1009 UserLocale=1009 UserLocale_DefaultUser=1009 With winnt.sif configured as such + the hack, "Default User" is configured as I would like with support for "English (Canada) - US" and "French (Canada) - Canadian French". Now to try this with sysprep.inf and see what mini-setup thinks.

I did a bit more testing today and here's what I found: I omitted the "KeyboardLayout" definition from the "[unattended]" section and included the following: [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1,2,3,4,5,6 InputLocale=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 InputLocale_DefaultUser=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 SystemLocale=1009 UserLocale=1009 UserLocale_DefaultUser=1009 This gives me: English (Canada) - US English (United States) - US French (Canada) - Canadian Multilingual Standard Almost there, I just need to scrap the US local/input language entry. I tried the "hack" that you referenced to remove the US presence but it didn't work as intended because I had more then two locales installed. While it did remove US it also broke French. In the particular reg key I had 1=00001009 2=00000409 3=00000c0c You can't break the numerical order, so I actually need to end up with: 1=00001009 2=00000c0c On Monday, I will add these settings to my registry config that's applied during cmdlines.txt. I can't believe how foolish it's been to get this up an running. Provided this actually works with the unattended, I will only cross to my fingers that the same config works with sysprep. From what I can see, it looks like the problem is that English (Canada) is properly defined/implemented. By default, English (Canada) uses the "Canadian Multilingual Standard" keyboard layout, which includes french characters (ie: / types as é). The only way to fix it is to pair the English (Canada) locale with the US keyboard layout.

Thanks for replying Takeshi. If I omit the "KeyboardLayout" definition from the "[unattended]" section of winnt.sif then, as per ref.chm, "setup detects and installs a keyboard layout", which happens to be "English (United States) - US". I'm trying to eliminate the US locale. I will try applying the "hack" posted by chiners_68. Because as far as I can see, a "Canadian English" keyboard layout does not exist. With the "KeyboardLayout" set to "Canadian English (Multilingual)" the installed keyboard layouts are "Canadian French" and "Canadian Multilingual Standard". Both layouts include characters I do not desire in the standard layout. My hope is that combining the "English (Canada)" locale with the "US" keyboard layout would allow me to maintain Canadian regional standards (ie: date format) but with a strictly English keyboard layout. Make sense? Actually, ref.chm states "this entry must match one of the right-hand strings (in quotation marks) in the [Keyboard Layout] section of TxtSetup.sif". Looking at txtsetup.sif, the only Canadian options are: 00001009 = "Canadian English (Multilingual)" 00000C0C = "Canadian French" 00010C0C = "Canadian French (Multilingual)" It would be nice if there was a "Canadian English".

I'm transitioning the unattended from SP1 to SP2 (XP Pro in both cases) and i'm cleaning up the "Regional Settings" a bit as the current settings allow for erroneous input languages and skew some of the regional standards/formats, such as short/long dates. The goal is to only have the following locale/keyboard layouts installed: 1. English (Canada) - US 2. French (Canada) - Canadian Multilingual Standard Unfortunately, I can't seem to get this configured properly in winnt.sif. The closest I can get is: [unattended] KeyboardLayout="Canadian English (Multilingual)" [RegionalSettings] InputLocale=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 InputLocale_DefaultUser=1009:0409,0c0c:11009 LanguageGroup=1,2,3,4,5,6 SystemLocale=1009 UserLocale=1009 UserLocale_DefaultUser=1009 Unfortunately, while it technical achieves the config i'm looking for it also includes "Canadian French" as a keyboard layout under the "English (Canada)" locale, which seems odd. I suspect this is caused by the "KeyboardLayout" definition under the "[unattended]" section being "Multilingual". But, there's no strictly "Canadian English" options (non-multilingual) and if I remove the setting entirely then "English (United States)" pops back by default, which I don't want for the above reasons. So, any help here would be appreciated.

Hey, I'm updating our current desktop image (XP Pro SP1) and have hit a nasty snag with respect to XP's Regional Settings and the Language Bar. By default, when additional input languages are installed, the "Language Bar" is activated along with a hotkey for switching between input languages (left Alt+Shift). This hotkey causes our support desk a significant number of calls so i've disabled it during the unattended installation via a script that loads/modifies the Default User hive. This is working beautifully - the hotkey is disable for each new user. Unfortunately, my images are all sysprep-based. After deploying a sysprep-based the settings for the Default User are being reset back to defaults, leaving the hotkey enabled. I've tried applying the same tweak used in my unattended via Cmdlines.txt, but no luck. The reset appears to occur after this point... Both my unattended.inf and sysprep.inf files contain the following language settings: [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1,2,3,4,5,6 Language=00001009 I'm looking for thoughts on maintaining these settings for the "Default User" post mini-setup. Thoughts?

The majority of my images these days are built using sysprep, which has proven quite valuable. I'm now looking to enhance my images by way of post-clone scripts that perform additional installations based on machine make/model or some other hardware information. I'm aiming to use WMI for this task. I've spent some time on this project and i've hit a snag. It appears that during the mini-setup process, when Cmdlines.txt is processed, the WMI information is either not yet populated or otherwise unavailable. Can anyone confirm the availability of WMI at this time? I did a bit of troubleshooting today and have confirmed that during mini-setup the WMI service (winmgmt) and related services are running, I am able to connect to the appropriate namespace (root\cimv2) and I can enumerate the class that I wish to query (Win32_ComputerSystem). Unfortunately, it appears that there's either not yet an instance of that class or I can't access the instance... I simply receive and error (0x8004100a) which is simly listed as an "internal, critical and unexpected error". Thoughts? I realize this is somewhat involved, but i'm not yet frustrated enough to call/pay MS for support. Thanks.

Sorry, i'm using Nero Express so the process is a little different... When I first open Nero Express I specify the recorder I would like to use (NEC DVD-R/W) then select "Disc Image". The next page allows me to set the burn speed, verify options, etc but the recorder defalts back to CD-R/W and DVD-R/W is no longer an option in the list. If I try to burn I get an error re: wrong media. Burning straight data DVD's from this machine is not an issue, so the problem is somewhere in the ISO.

Looking for instructions on creating a bootable DVD for an unattended install of XP. I'm not looking to make a multi-boot DVD but i've tried these guides as a starter, build the ISO (cdimage) but can't actually burn the ISO to DVD using Nero - it keeps expecting CD media. Thanks.

ttt