GreenMachine

I'm sceptical ... Have you already done this? If so, have you installed to a DIFFERENT machine than that from which saved the ntuser.dat? This file is not on the distribution CD as it is built on each installation, and includes machine specific stuff like HDD mount points, GUID Identities, used by such things as Outlook Express (I know, I know...), Microsoft Input Devices. I may be mistaken, but I believe a move of this file would keep the current permissions - can a non-administrator access it? Tweaking the registry is already tricky business, I find it hard to belive that copying entier hives from one machine to another is without risk ... Then again, if it works for you, umso besser!

Phew. You almost burst my bubble... No MAC, I'm still stealth as I can be. Thanks for the info.

Big MAC? Must be looking on the wrong page, I assume you meant Gibson Research's Shields Up test. You are not confusing MAC and IP addresses? Anyway, I am stealth behind a hardware firewall, which does all NAT translation, so if any MAC goes out, it'll be that one. But just in case ... could you please post the link to the exact page that will test this? Thanks!

Yes, I saw that MSKB article. What rubs me the wrong way is that even following the steps indicated, using the switches they list, it still gives me an error (though I am confident it installs OK). I played around with it for a while directly at the command line, determined that there is a bug in it, and have not looked at it since. (I have enough of my own de-bugging to do ...) Anyway, I'm not crazy about the idea of sharing my MAC address.

Dime to a Dollar it's 817778 ...

If you mean all the $NTUninstall????????$, I used to, as well as the uninstall entries in the registry. No need to now: with the "no uninstall" switch (/n ?) neither those folders nor the reg. entries should be created. On the other hand, I think the problem Igor is having is not what you think. He says it happens near the end of setup, and I assume he means XP setup, and not the CD preperation. I have the same error everytime I try to install the update KB817778. The give-away is the windows title: Windows Setup Error. It is either the program itself (KB817778.exe) or, more likely, the update.exe that is contained in the hotfix. I've tried to install it with many different switches, and always come up with an error, unless I install directly from Windows Update. Furthermore, though there in a "no uninstall" switch, it refuses to install without leaving its uninstall routines/reg. entries. And even though it generates an error, the setup appears successful, though I have not tested the MS P2P stuff. I am surprised that no one else has trouble with this update. For the moment, I just put it on the back burner, as it is not critical. The most anoying part, is that the error messaeg says unsupported switch and gives a list of valid switches. Of course, the switches used were all in the list ... Go figure

Igor: Did your error image/window have "Windows Setup Error" as a title for the pop-up box? And at which point does it occur? I have a similar problem with hotfix Q817778. Could be related...

Regarding the left-over .log and .tmp files: Till now, I have just manually deleted everything that looked superfluous, and that includes any text or temp files that were not "system locked" in C:\Windows\. Never had a problem. But I did just add the command to delete all logs (%SYSTEMROOT%\*.log) and temp (%SYSTEMROOT%\*.tmp). Except for SchedLgU.txt, which is locked, I've never kept any of them very long.

Your script is fine: this stuff should just be included with any other house-keeping scripts that are running near the end of the install. I know, they tend to leave a lot of tid-bits hanging around ... but not on my watch!

Thank you, for putting into words what I had only been thinking about doing. I had looked at the hotfix slipstreaming since I started slipstreaming last year, and was always detered by the tediousness, not to mention the warnings in all info I could find about it. My reasons were two fold: 1) To insure that the CD and the instalation had the same files, thus if windows file protection should really need to get back, the right version was on the CD, and not inside some hot fix. 2) Reduce the 30 minutes or so it seems to take to run the hotfixes (never figured out why it works so quicky when doing it from the Windows Update site). Part 1 is solved, but the hot fixes are still run, each and every one. (Sure takes a long tiome to go from 13 to 12 minutes left.) The point of my drawn out post is that whilst running the hotfixes during the instalation, it leaves behind many log files (Q??????.log) and copies of the cat files (SET??.tmp) all over the %SYSTEMROOT%. If you want to keep the install clean and minimailist, you may want to add the command to delete this files. And again, thanks for sharing.

From what I've read, the alexa thing in IE is mis-identified by Ad-Aware as a ad/spy ware program (that has the same name). It is, in fact a part of IE, though there does not seem to be any harm in deleting the key, and then Ad-Aware doesn't bug you about it anymore. Just what I've read ... never given me problems in or out. From some forum page somewhere ...

Looks great. In the regional settings, I use a mix of Eng. US (language and locale) and Eng. UK (Time and date settings - international and metric), which results in this in WINNT.SIF: [RegionalSettings] LanguageGroup=1 SystemLocale=00000409 UserLocale=00000809 InputLocale=0409:00000409 Can you do that?

My 2 cents ... ;Right click to (un)register DLL files, open in Notepad by default. [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell] @="View" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\Register\command] @="C:\\WINNT\\system32\\REGSVR32.EXE \"%1\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\UnRegister] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\UnRegister\command] @="C:\\WINNT\\system32\\REGSVR32.EXE /u \"%1\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\View] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\shell\View\command] @="C:\\WINNT\\System32\\NOTEPAD.EXE \"%1\"" ;Open folders in Explorer view. [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell] @="explore" ; Open scripts with Notepad by default - do not run. [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile\Shell] @="Edit" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBEFile\Shell] @="Edit" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\JSFile\Shell] @="Edit" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\JSEFile\Shell] @="Edit" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WSHFile\Shell] @="Edit" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WSHFile\Shell\Edit\Command] @="Notepad.exe %1" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WSFFile\Shell] @="Edit" ;Clean up NEW Templates ;This will remove these items from the "New" context menu. [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.bfc\ShellNew] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.bmp\ShellNew] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc\WordPad.Document.1\ShellNew] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.rtf\ShellNew] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.wav\ShellNew] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.zip\CompressedFolder\ShellNew] ;Remove WMP Right Click Options (Queue-it-up, etc.) ;Remove the Queue-it-up, Burn to CD right click options on Windows Media Player files. [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{CE3FB1D1-02AE-4a5f-A6E9-D9F1B4073E6C}] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F1B9284F-E9DC-4e68-9D7E-42362A59F0FD}] [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8DD448E6-C188-4aed-AF92-44956194EB1F}]

... come on, poor fella, read the fine print on the MS page ...

Just need the key - no values. I still install with the /N switch, and after add the key to the registry via a .reg file.

Boy, this one bugged me ... My unattended XP CD worked fine, with all the latest critical updates. However, Windows Update consistantly reported that the Blaster Worm update, 823980, needed to be installed. Repeated installs from the site were of no avail. The 823980 Scanner tool, used from another PC, reported that the update had been installed. To make a long story short, after a day of trial and error, it turns out that Windows Update relies on the presence of registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\KB823980 to (very scientifically) determine if the patch has been applied. No "Uninstall" keys are created during a "/N" install, and subsequent install would report that the installation completed successfully, though it obvioussly crapped out once it found the correct file versions, and did not bother to update the registry. And this is the patch they are ranting and raving about? No wonder the solution to the famous worm was to take WindowsUpdate offline ...