pmcx9

Golly gosh! great collection of postings over the last few days.

$OEM$ and yes to regtweaks etc. DOH! your soooo quick AAron. May as well delete this post as just cluttering up now!

in your $OEM$ directory place these two files cmdlines.txt [COMMANDS] ".\installs.cmd" installs.cmd rem Change this username set _USER=********put your choice of username here********** net user %_USER% "" /add >nul net localgroup administrators "%_USER%" /add>nul %SystemRoot%\system32\reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "DefaultUserName" /d "%_USER%" /f %SystemRoot%\system32\reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "DefaultUserPassword" /d "" /f %SystemRoot%\system32\reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "AutoAdminLogon" /d "1" /f and make sure your winnt.sif has these lines in it amongst others ;SetupMgrTag [Unattended] UnattendMode=FullUnattended UnattendSwitch="Yes" [Data] UnattendedInstall="Yes" [GuiUnattended] AdminPassword=* EncryptedAdminPassword=NO and this should auto create a user for you. I leave all my files on the hard disk and alter them there and burn to a 24speed rewritable when needed

yep, post all your knowledge as this forum is a great tool. i scour this site daily trying to make my cd better and better

there is a real alternative 1.09 and those switches work for me EDIT....apologies I was using an earlier version of realalternative and since changing I have same problem with connection speed prompt! Further EDIT.......http://www.klboard.ath.cx/index.php?showtopic=72358&st=0entry565147 Paul(developer KLcodec) says no way to supress connection speed prompt! :/

For anyone that installs the Kazaalite codec pack there are switches for altering the default install options. For instance I wanted an mpeg2 codec installed as well so Paul, the developer of KL, sent me this; Incidentally a new codec pack inclusive of the Real and Quicktime alternative's is imminent. http://www.klboard.ath.cx/index.php?

Wondered if you had a hivedef.inf for xp pro I could take a look at as well? Numinous has been playing around with this method to change the settings for the default.user but the syntax is a little different than reg files.

simple but effective. cheers

I think OfficeXP has an IE5 directory that can be dumped and I found this; You can reduce the amount of space required by omitting unneeded folders such as the ORK, SharePt, and MSDE2000 folders. If all your users are running WindowsXP, you can also omit the OSP folder. The CAB file and core Office XP MSI file require approximately 230 MB of free space. I dont use NAV corp but I would suppose it may have an adobe folder in it that could be dumped?

@numinous. I totally agree that this is a forum and not a guide shop. for a lot of members and a lot of interest not mainy people actually really contribute to an evolving process such as the hive.inf as you are at the minute. My expertise is very limited so I only like to offer a comment when I have a vague idea what i am talking about. Keep up your postings and ideas!

I have found with my unattended CD that the user I create subsequently finds this message appearing not initially but a few weeks later. Wondered if others have had a mature unattended installation give this? I know how to manually change this but wondered if anyone knew the setting in winnt.sif I guess that will enable the "password never expires" option.

I found this when searching around google for hivedef.inf You can also change the values of default entries in these .inf files. The easiest way to get these entries is to start with a clean install. Then: http://downloads1.ondemandsoftware.com/dow...ininstallle.exe and compare before and after tweaking.

Thanks Numinous...........way ahead of you on them Just wondered if you had done a test install with any hive changes yet? Found this while ferreting around which may be useful to someone although not related to Numinous's discovery. http://www.tacktech.com/registry.cfm

nope, no-one has managed to crack that. Maybe use autoit or vbs scripts to simulate a key press.

That link is not working for me. Not a lot of point in expecting an answer to this question as it has been discussed extensively and is in fact the topic of one of the stickies at the top of the forum http://board.MSFN.org/index.php?showtopic=8041

can you post the link where you got your info from please?

fantastisch! Numinous...you have hit on what I have been trying to do for the last couple of weeks. I had ended up using "settings and files transfer wizard" to do it after an install. now to go tweaking! I want to do things like disable screensaver and have power policy as always on.

My i386 directory is 346meg without lang etc rar (self extracting, silent, solid) up the entire contents of the $1 folder and have it extract to the hard disk first of all from your installs.cmd only downside is can be slightly awkward to alter hotfixes,apps etc when you want to alter your core xpcd as packed in a rar file. Give us a list of your apps to see if anything can be slimmed down.

not sure you need this advice with the number of posts you have but; when making the rar choose "create solid archive" and "best compression method" to reduce size. Also rar as many files/folders into one as possible ie rar whole apps directory and extract as one. also check through yours apps to dump uneccessary bits; nav2003 and adobe6 etc can be extensively streamlined. And I assume you have already dumped as much from Winxp as possible?

This part of the winnt.sif will install XP to a single formatted hard disk and remove any previous partitioning. ;SetupMgrTag [Unattended] UnattendMode=FullUnattended OemSkipEula=Yes ExtendOEMPartition=0 OemPreinstall=Yes UnattendSwitch="Yes" TargetPath=\WINDOWS Hibernation=No Repartition=Yes WaitForReboot="No" DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\AC97 drivers;Drivers\Nvidia 45.23" [Data] MSDosInitiated="0" UnattendedInstall="Yes" AutoPartition=1 Change your winnt.sif as appropriate.

@devil Now that is a handy way of doing things. Care to share that vbs script?

lets see the code of your regtweak.reg as well

i did chuckle reading that reply. My customers are individuals not business. I install remote administrator software(tightvnc) as standard on all pc's so I can "sort" out their cock ups. Have you ever sat on the phone or on msn messenger and tried to explain to someone how to hover over a black "V" to get an ip and they swear blind it is not there. Regarding the ntuser.dat file......it definitely contains all the settings that I am interested in a new user having. Like you said before I need to get a way of overwriting the original immediately after reboot before guirunonce initiates

I am a small time system builder so an unattended xp install is superb for me. I do a clean install maybe 10 times a week. I need to leave administrator open as the "ejots" I supply do incredible things to their PC's and I need to get at them quickly. Your points about clean install and adjusting hive I already adhere to but definitely the thing to do. My goal is to have a totally automated process that I can give to the customer should they make a mess so they can reinstall painlessly with full tweaks as I like. I know 8 months down the line it will be out of date but it is a starting block for them. Getting the visual tweaks for the user and changing power policy to always on is really all i am left with to do besides a few silent install of appz so thanks for your head up.

@sunil My unattended install is aimed at a single user so installing appz to default users or multiple is irrelevant for me but thanks for the heads up as it may affect others who read this thread. I am trying to think of an app I have used that installs to a single person. Getright is the only one I can think of that prompts when creating a new user on a mature rig! The visual settings I am trying to get as far as I know can't be applied to the HKCU while active as they won't stick. I may be wrong here. Such things as unchecking of "fade effect" for appearance and getting the explorer shortcut onto the taskbar are what I am after and Greenmachines approach seems best for this.