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Wow, that worked rather nicely. Thanks a lot.

Are these high bitrate movies and sound files? For movies encoded in AC3 audio, you'll need the AC3 Filter to push up the sound. It's encoded that way because AC3 has much more capability than the regular encodings. For MP3s, anything less than 192 kbps tend to be fairly quiet in my opinion. Of course, if even MP3s sound like they're at normal levels when you push it way up, then it's probably not the bitrate.

When you say 100%, is the Wave Volume also at its highest?

Something similar happens to me when I'm connected to my DSL modem. The service requires PPPoE authentication, and during startup, it tries to renew the network address before actually running the file that connects it to the service. During this time, there is no hard drive activity. Never found a way around it.

Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. You can save all your current files and settings onto a removable drive and then use the same wizard to import them.

Setup the desktop the way that you like it, then under Display Properties, in the Themes tab, click on Save As... Put this .theme file in your $OEM$\$$\Resources\Themes folder on your CD. In your winnt.sif file, have the following property under the [shell] section: CustomDefaultThemeFile = "%SYSTEMROOT%\Resources\Themes\MyTheme.theme"

You can just set each user to have a login script. Then, kind of hack the system by creating files that identify each set of monthly updates in a folder somewhere. In the login script, have an IF EXISTS or IF NOT EXISTS statement. If the file exists, then that month's updates have already been installed. If not, then they are not installed and you can grab them via a public network share on your storage computer. At the end, just have a shutdown command in the batch file. Something like shutdown -r -t 60 -c "Please save your work. Restart in 60 seconds." -f

It's a remote user that sent in their laptop because it was having trouble with SAP. I don't think that firing is common place with this company. They work with Sales and pretty much everything else.

That sounds a little closer to what my friend needs, but it also sounds like he'll need to make some sort of list or filtering option to make it work. Are there third party applications that can prevent third party applications?

As far as I know, it's just one laptop that's causing trouble. It's a horribly set up IT environment where everyone is running with Administrative privileges. But that's beside the point. The supervisor wants this one laptop to be essentially crippled. Things like LimeWire should not be able to be installed. It is on a domain, but since it's a laptop for a remote user, they may or may not be connected to the domain (physically) when they log in. So the settings need to be local. Can you please tell me how I can still let Windows Update through properly under Limited User accounts? From what I hear, my friend isn't able to get this to work properly. Oh, another thing that I vaguely remember from working there. Limited User accounts also screws over the ability to use Outlook among other things properly despite the fact that the PST file is in that user's local settings folder under that specific domain.

Is there a way to restrict users from installing anything but still allow for things like Windows Update and SAV to search for and install updates in the background? I was thinking some sort of group permissions and then Run As command. But I don't think that that's going to work. I have a feeling that Group Policy Objects would work, but I'm not too familiar with those. I'm trying to help out a friend who is now working at my previous position. I no longer have the resources for virtual or actual testing. So, I may need a explanation or two on how to do things. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Put the command and switch "start /wait" (without the quotes) in front of all your GuiRunOnce commands. This will help to alleviate all the simultaneous commands that are running. The /wait switch causes Windows to wait for that process to finish before moving on with the next command. Obviously, if you wish to clean stuff up in a small time buffer that you set like Bi0haZarD does, then you don't want start /wait in front of the shutdown command, but everything else is fine.

Try redownloading the installer.

That should be [GuiRunOnce] Comman0 = %systemdrive%\install\start.cmd But anyways, just use Notepad or something and make a plain text file. When it's time for you to save the file, just save it as "start.cmd" with the quotes. If you mean which commands to use in start.cmd to install those drivers, it would be easier for you to just follow the winnt.sif method to install drivers. http://unattended.msfn.org/intermediate/drivers/drivers.htm

Oh, now that's an interesting one to think about. My guess would be yes, but I'm far from being a professional in unattended installations. At the very least, you'll need to change what you have above to [GuiRunOnce] Command0 = %systemdrive%\install\main_batch.cmd Other than that, I strongly recommend a test in VMware or something similar. Before the text setup mode runs, it will check your winnt.sif file for errors.

What does it say for the UnattendMode property under the [unattended] section of your winnt.sif? A copy of your winnt.sif is also useful. Please remove the product key and any identifiable information first.

Is there a command that calls this batch file in winnt.sif? Specifically in the [GuiRunOnce] section?

Does the folder that contain these folders that you can't change have write access?

If the text setup doesn't complain about a malformed winnt.sif file, then setup should proceed as normal, just without the stuff inside of $OEM$ being copied to the hard drive. For the record, if you want this to happen, you should have OemPreinstall = Yes, not 1.

Before sifting through both unattended setup files, how are your installations not working?

Where's the batch file located in your installation share?

The autologon doesn't work when you encrypt the Administrator password.

I don't know much about activation itself, but I do know that Nero installs a virtual optical drive by default. That could be considered a hardware change if you want.

If you have any new laptops and desktops lying around, take a look at the C:\DELL\drivers folder for the drivers used for the current installation. (Alternatively, use the Drivers CD and try and get into the hidden partition for newer computers.) Then just take a look at this section of the guide: http://unattended.msfn.org/intermediate/drivers/drivers.htm to set up folders for each chipset that you want to use and the same for the other drivers. XP looks for the best possible match, so having multiple folders for chipsets doesn't make a difference, but it does make a more universally friendly unattended image.

Lucky guess really. But now that I think about it more, although RunOnceEx runs during the T-12 time, all it's essentially doing is adding registry entries to be run on the next login. If you have a command in [GuiRunOnce] to set the %CDROM% variable again, then it should run concurrently with the registry entries. It's a good thing that it finishes before the RunOnceEx stuff does. Otherwise if it's in your RunOnceEx entries, even better.