willpantin

@jaclaz Hmm... Not sure I agree with you when it comes to SSD drives. They are very expensive to begin with, so usually their main function is to be your main OS boot Drive. I personally can't afford to go any higher than 128 GB... And, all those chores you mentioned, are very fast with SSD Drives; in fact, defragmenting is not needed at all on SSD drives...! If anything, I have been considering on using a RAID array to merge my SSD drives. But I don't want to risk the TRIM not working as a result, nor increase my chance of my OS failing due to the increased odds of a drive failure affecting my OS. Having said that, I do want to mention that I have been out of the loop for a while (hadn't visited the msfn forum in a very long time), and browsing around to catch up, I couldn't help but notice how pleasant and helpful you are towards people asking questions. I just wanted to thank you on everyone's behalf for taking time to help. I am also pleased to see all the usual people still thriving on here... Sad to hear about Kels' wife passing away, though. Strange how you end up feeling that this community is part of your life, even though, in my case, this is just a hobby...

OK, thanks for the hint, jaclaz...! Sure enough, in Disk Management I see the other 59.5 GB of unallocated disk space... Thanks! For the next clueless guy that runs into this: Solution: I used Disk Management in Windows 7. I right-clicked on the C:\ Volume (left hand side partition), left of the unallocated Volume partition Then I chose "Extend Volume" and now I have one large C:\ drive showing 119.14 GB Thanks again, "jaclaz...!!!" You saved me a lot of time by pointing me in the right direction.

I replaced my Kingston 64 GB SSD V series with a Crucial 128 GB Real SSD C300. Method: Made a backup image of my C:\ Kingston SSD Boot Drive using "Windows 7 Backup and Restore," then used my "Windows 7 Repair Disk" to copy the imaged drive to my new Crucial 128 GB Drive. Problem: Though Windows reports an improvement by increasing my Win 7 rating from 6.7 to 7.3, my new Crucial SSD Drive shows as having only 64 GB capacity (well, 59.5 GB to be precise), instead of closer to 128 GB. The BIOS does show the correct size. System Details: ASUS P6T SE Intel i7 930 @ 2.8 GHz Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 Is this problem only cosmetic? Can it be easily corrected? Any help would be appreciated...!

planoleg said: I have tried this too, successfully, but would like InCD installed as well, and cannot figure out why it won't install unnattended. In the INCLUDE/EXCLUDE options of conf.txt there was no entry for InCD, so I tried adding: but that didn't work either.Any ideas? (The version I installed was Nero 7.8.5.0)

Do any of the files on oembios.net work on "Averatec" notebooks...? If not, could anyone point me to where I could find the oem files...? Thanks...! And... Happy New Year...!!!

I asked this question as well. There was 1 useful reply... http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...mp;#entry504216

Nearly two years have passed since I asked this question, maybe someone out there now knows how to include the "Trusted Publishers' Certificates" in an Unattended install...? It would be helpful, as not everyone knows which companies or publishers are safe to allow on the computer, and are needed for their purposes... Thanks for any enlightment on this subject...!

To make a bootable Flash Drive in the NTFS format, follow the instructions I am quoting from some forgotten source (I used cut and paste, and saved in TXT file for my later use). Use at your own risk! Note: I had to look for a different way to make the partition active, as that option, as described, was greyed out. This helps explain why the option was greyed out, though it was answering a different problem: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315261 But, note you can also boot from a BartPE CD and set it as active from there. Whatever system you use, make sure the Flash Drive is in the USB port while booting, so it is recognized...!

p4ntb0y said Well, at least on my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB Flash Drive the HP Format Utility seemed to work fine. I was able to boot from it and install what on my computer amounted to about 1.5 GB worth of files on it (I guess on the Flash Drive, with the FAT system, they added up to almost 2 GB). I was then able to install Windows by running WINNT.EXE from the DOS prompt. It was noticeably slower when formatted with the HP utility because it formatted in FAT16, but it worked. Not unattended, though...! I also tried formatting in NTFS, which booted incredibly fast, and allowed placing a full 1.96 GB worth of files on the Flash Drive, but had dissapointing results as well with trying to install unattended. I saved the instructions for an NTFS bootable Flash drive if anyone would like it posted here, but unfortunately I wouldn't know who to credit for the original posting... @Bezalel, Sounds interesting, might just look into that...!

magicbright, All your questions are answered in the Unattended install guide. Since you only have 3 posts, and are still learning your way around, I will give you the link, but usually people here find questions that are already covered in the guide annoying, redundant, and unnecessary... Please look around first to make sure your questions haven't been covered already, before posting them. Thanks, and welcome to the forum...! http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/48/

mmarable, Thanks for your reply. Your tip does help, and I might try a few things along those lines. However, right now this method has a big obstacle: You can start WINNT.EXE to start the Windows installation, but then on the reboots (e.g. after install files get copied to target drive), the flash drive will boot to DOS again, interrupting the installation. To solve the above problem, it seems you would have to partition the target drive into two partitions, placing the I386 and $OEM$ installation folders on the "installation partition", from where you would start WINNT.EXE. Then the flash drive would have to be removed from the USB port to allow reboots that do not interrupt Windows install. Perhaps a batch file could be created to accomplish those tasks, but it seems having to hang by to remove the Flash Drive defeats the purpose of having things done unattended... Not to mention the long process of partitioning, formatting, and transfering all files over. Of course, I may be thinking in the wrong direction. Maybe someone has some simple, but fresh new ideas...! (Unless some utility comes out, so that we can make USB Flash Drives emulate the behaviour of a CD ROM Drive...!)

Well, I thought I would save a lot of people a lot of time...! After extensive research and testing, I can say that as of March 9, 2006, it seems it is NOT POSSIBLE to do a fully unattended install of Windows XP from a USB Flash Drive (known also as a "pen drive", or "flash key drive"). I am aware of the many links and tutorials on installing Windows XP on the Flash Drive itself. That is not what we are talking about (Tom's Hardware, Bart PE). I also was able to easily format the USB Flash Drive into an active partition that boots to DOS on machines that allow booting from USB. You can then do a regular (not unattended) install of Windows XP by starting WINNT.EXE. But, no winnt.sif install, meaning no additional programs can be installed. So, that is not what we are talking about either...! (I am just glad I did not mess up my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB Flash drive with all my formatting tests...!) PS. I know there are other posts on the subject, but they all mislead people into thinking it's possible. I felt it was time to start a clean thread that summarizes everything people might learn from following other threads on the subjet.

jcarle said: Well, the solution was simple...! What was happening to you, is that the I386 folder on the installation CD has a "cabbed" wpa.dbl, which looks like: "WPA.DB_", and it is taking precedence over your wpa.dbl file which is "uncabbed". So, the solution was to cab your wpa.dbl in dos window, by typing "makecab WPA.DBL" Then, place the new WPA.DB_ in the I386 installation folder, over-writing the old one... Done!

Thanks, cheezus420...! Well, I have used the "svcpack.inf method" in the past, but there are some differences between that method and the "MS integrated hotfixes" method: a. The svcpack.inf file has no entries under the [ProductCatalogsToInstall] heading in the scvpack.inf method b. The files "HFINT.dat" "branches.inf" are only present in the MS integrated hotfixes method (in the svcpack folder) c. The CAT files are not created for the svcpack.inf method in the svcpack folder Anyway, I will try simply removing the old hotfixes and their .cat files, as well as their references from the svcpack.inf file in the I386 folder. That ought to be all that's needed.

Apparently when choosing to integrate hotfixes, they are not truly integrated in the sense that your system files on the installation CD get replaced by newer versions. Instead, the hotfixes get placed in the "svcpack" folder, along with some ".cat" files, an "HFINT.dat" file and a "branches.inf" file. My question is, if these hotfixes are superceded by newer ones, for the sake of speeding up the install, how do I correctly remove the hotfixes? In fact, would it be safe to just remove ALL contents of the svcpack folder, so as to install the hotfixes from RunOnceEx instead, or are the contents of svcpack folder called upon from some other installation file? Thanks for any help!

Did anyone figure out how to install NOD32 Unattended? It has me stumped as well.

OK, two new updates are out which seem to be missing on the list on page 1...! KB890830 and KB890175

@Alanoll and @Tsunami, I am extremely familiar with how to refine searches, and know how to search as well as any of you. But quite often the information one needs is found in an unrelated thread, where the title of the post has nothing to do with the information you seek. This is most apparent when wading through application switches or registry tweaks. You guys did not read my post carefully. I thought I had made it clear I knew how to refine searches by limiting to Titles of posts when I said:

@Alanoll, Please don't take what I am going to say the wrong way, as I value your contributions to the board, and your wonderful attempts to keep some order. You have also helped me a lot with many of your great posts. However, I think you need to relax sometimes regarding what may seem to you as redundant posts. Pezzie's post was quite helpful to quite a few people, I am sure, simply because the "Search" function at MSFN, in my opinion, leaves a lot to be desired, despite all the pearls of wisdom hidden within. The problem is that when you do a "Search" for something, and you are searching beyond just the title of the posts (which is more often than not quite necessary to get any results), you get some results with posts with hundreds of replies, and you have to wade through these pages and pages of replies just in the hopes you find the exact page with the reply you needed. It is extremely time consuming. So, if Pezzie found that to be case, I am sure those trying to find the same info in the future will be grateful for his time-saving post, as they would otherwise also have to wade through the baloney to get to the important, hidden, msfn filet-mignons...!

jrzycrim, Your last solution, dated Aug 8, 2004, really rocks...! I had been trying for ages to get my icons and other settings customized, and had even been using the Files and Settings transfer Wizard to accomplish this, but it wasn't as beautiful and simple a solution as yours. I am very grateful... Thanks again!

Hmm... Still no answers...? I will give up on this one, I guess...

No one able to help on this one...?

I would like to have my "Trusted Publishers' Certificates" in IE unattended. I know about the export function, but then is there a way to import these files in an unattended fashion? (CER extension) I am talking about trusted certificates that are found in: Internet Explorer, Tools, Internet Options, "Content" tab, Trusted Publishers Thanks for any help! B)

@Jito463, Thanks! Your tips helped me vastly improve the speed of Virtual PC 2004, while still being able to multi-task...! To summarize: 1. Ideally, choose a drive for the Virtual PC file for your tests other than the one that hosts your main operating system. 2. Instead of the expanding drive option, choose the set size option. In my case, it set aside about 16 GB. This was important too, I believe, in improving speed. 3. Choose the options Jito463 mentioned. @MHz, You said: I believe most of us have tried that already, aeons ago, perhaps even on our very first Unattended CD attempts...! Unfortunately, it just doesn't work.

@Daimao, After a couple of minutes of thought, and without any actual testing, I arrived at the conclusion that using: will only name the Favorites link as "MS/MSN.url", but will not create any folders... There must be a good a command someone out there knows for this...!? @glent, Thanks, good tip. Still, ideally I would like a way to speed up VirtualPC while multitasking...!