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You could have deleted it from right click My Computer -> properties -> Startup Recovery -> advanced -> Edit.

I will give it a go over the weekend. So I am assuming I have to hex both the boot.bin & setupldr.bin. In this case my path increases by more than 4 characters & will change the file size. If I am simply changeing the I386 occurances then that approach has not worked. Simply for testing purpose I changed the name of the I386 folder. Used the hexed setupldr.bin & booted the cd. It did not work. I restored the I386 name & restored the unhexed setupldr.bin & worked flawlessly. So I am not missing file in my compilation. If possible could you pm me the output of dir2text file for the directory structure? Will work from there. Thanks.

I came across an nLited installation of XP-SP2. The startup screen will not flash in spite of my enabling it in My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> StartUp & Recovery Settings. It comes on if I hit F8 quickly enough. I need it to be able to guide the end user over telephone. Any suggestion on reg tweak or a missing file ? Thanks.

I had similar problem incorporating the OEM drivers. This was of course limited to the audio, video & onboard nic. I used a different approoach. 1. I first made a full fledged install. 2. Used "DriverMax" utility to backup the drivers. 3. Created a selfextacting cab file of the backup folder. Size reduction 26 mb -> 15 mb. 4. Put this in $oem$\$1\Drivers\ folder 5. Added appropriate line to the "pnpoemdriverpath" to point to this location. 6. Used DetachedProgram option to run a file called expand.cmd. 7. This expand.cmd ran the selfextracting file & after a delay deleted it. The installation went through without a hitch & all the proper drivers were automatically installed.

I downloaded the version 5.5. I tried to use the same method as was used in earlier version , 3.4 I believe. I used to use .cmd files as a number of other actions needed to be taken apart from main installation, such as copying some icons to quick launch bar or configuration file to the installation folder, etc. Only the first part of the cmd file is executed. Subsequent actions are not taken & wpi hangs. BTW i do have the findcd subroutine in these cmd files. These run from Z to D so that the wpi folder in the root of a volume does not get mistaken for cdrom. Any reason for this behaviour? Any way, any solution to this ?

Transfer the hard disk back to the original PC from which it was copied. It should boot normally. Next change the hard disk controller to "generic ide" controller. Change the graphic card to "generic vga". Transfer the hdd to the new machine. You MUST boot to "Safe Mode" the first tyime around. Windows will find the new hardware & install the necessary drivers if these are standard ones included in the XP installation.

For some reason I can't get this time delay activated even after going into My Compter -> Properties -> Advanced -> Start up & Recovery and checkmarking the appropriate box. Apparently either some file is missing or there is some registry entry I am missing. I want it to come of by default everytime the system boots so the end user need not be too dexterous to hit F8 at the right time when I am guiding him on the phone. Can anyone help?

I found a utility called videochanger with very similar arguments except that you also specify the vertical refresh rate. It goes like "videochanger.exe 1024x768x32@75." Does the utility quoted aboe automatically take care of the vertical refresh rate? If it does I would certainly want to try it.

1, 2, 3. cmd loads the variables at the startup. When you "load" cmd, it "loads" the variables. Pretty much nothing I can do about it. 4. Nope, there isn't, sorry. Maybe later, or a separate app, heh. 5. God, I once implemented it, but I have no idea what the state is on that. I should check that. I do recommend thern to use the "for... blah blah" to detect the drive (although I think WPI has a separate method to detect the drives?) but I don't really see what you're doing afterwards. I am a 200 mb CD freak. I have broken up my full fledged windows installation in 3 parts. The 1st cd is a multiboot cd which includes boot options that permit partitioning, formatting & installation of th main OS. On the same cd I have a minibrowser which has references to the following 2 CDs. One containing Applications & the oither a good selection of utilities. When the user clicks on his selection, the routine copies a number of cmd files & winejcet to the root of %systemdrive%, starts one of the cmd files in another shell & exits. The variable %cdrom% does not exist in the new shell so the cmd file runs the find CD routine & "wineject"s the CD tray & after a predefined delay retracts the tray. It looks for the specific file file on the CD the user may have selected. If the file is not found it displays a message & ejects the CD once again, looping until the user either terminates the process or inserts the correct CD, at which point the cmd file will erase the files which were originally copied to the systemroot & del itself. The Correct CD will then autorun. One can also leave the option of checking for the cd rom & simply end the process, leaving the PC itself to take care of the autorun for that CD.

Since you are located in India I suggest OEM packaged Sony Dual layer DVD-RW drives which are available for Rs.2000/= in Mumbai. The extra advantage is even if you are working on a CD image you can do all the testing on DVD+RW. Writing is at least 5 times faster than the fastest CD-RW. The media is around Rs.75/=

May be I am late but boith links return a 404 page not found errors.

Some of the hardware have hwid list 6-7 lines long. Should I just pick the compatible one with the least number of " arguments !"

Thanks. I read up on the subject elsewhere on the forum, tried it & it worked like a charm. Now I am searching for methods of presetting my folder options & startmenu options. Mind you these are more like personal preferences type. Once I get that fixed upo I am all set with my 200 mb full installation that can also partition the hdd/ format the partitions & install boot manager - sort of an AIO. As a final it runs change owner & organisation + change serial numnber, when I have to input details provides by the client & his xp package.

As mentioned earlier I have already done that. I also know how optimisation works. I have also seen ERD commander & OOBE boot disks with doctored setuplder.bin If I were to copy the contents of the DVD to a hard disk in conventional manner using say Total Commander it would take up close to 45 GB of space. Just to check it out I simply copied the folder under w2kpro to my hard disk. Found the relevant boot.bin on the net, it is available from a hundred different places. Used it as a boot loader pointing to \i386\setupldr.bin & burnt a cd. The I386 folder was in the root of the CD. In such a scenariomany changes to setupldr.bin on txtsetup.sif should render it invalid. It booted & installed in full unattended mode. It dis not go the winnt.exe route either. So I am assuming that it must be doing something different. Even BCDW can boot BartPE with a simple change of the I386 folder to say WNPE & pointing to \WNPE\setupldr.bin to run live CD. I have looked up a lot of material on putting 2 different OSes requiring I386 folders in the root of the CD. I have never seen any reference to editing txtsetup.sif, only to changing setupldr.bin in 3 - 4 locations & renaming from \I386 to say \W2KP or the like. I have tried this approach but it did not work It asked for the service pack disk. Same compilation with the I386 folder name unchanged & undoctored setupldr.bin file installed without a single hitch or prompt.

I have seen a dvd image of 4.3 gb with ezboot menu system containing close to 30 different distros. Each distro is in a folder which is not necessrily a 4 character name. Each folder contains its own i386 folder and other files which you would find within each individual individual setup cd. Not a single file is hacked. I have checked quite a few of them by binary compare. If I simply copy the contents of such a folder & add a appropriate boot.bin to create a cd they work absolutely perfectly. So there must be something in EZBOOT menu system that allows it. These do not boot to dos & run winnt.exe. These are all standard installations.

Why are you thinking in terms of messing up another CD? Why not use cd-rw media? In 2000 I bought 30 cd-rw disks in US @ $1.00 a piece when regular media cost around $1.50 here in India. Even now I am reusing them. Of course they are slow & only 650 mb. I also have the newer 700 mb 12x media. Once my cd is finalised I burn it to one of the old ones.

I think what you should try is something like a self deleting cleanup.cmd as the last file to run. Here you can del the earlier RunOnceEx.exe file or what ever file you want, move / copy files to their proper locations, add your final tweaks etc. I had 75 mb of drivers in my $oem$\$1\drivers folder. I reduced this to 45 mb self extracting cab file drivers.exe. This file also retains directory structure on expansion. I run this file from a DetachedProgram option in winnt.sif. Finally I delete this drivers.exe from a selfdeleting clean.cmd file.

Thank you very much for your code. It works flawlessly for me. What I have done is instead of putting all the expanded drivers in $oem$\$1\Drivers folder I have created a self extracting cab file encompassing all the drivers I need. Unlike M$ expand utility this executable automatically recreates directory structure also! The folder size has gone down from 75 mb to 45 mb. All the drivers are now available to the installer. I delete the executables & the .cmd file at the last stage of the installation. I am now going to try the same trick with $Prog & $Doc folders to see if I can save further space.

I have created self extracting driver files which get copied to the %Systemdrive%\Drivers" What would be the correct location for running these self-extracting files so that the drivers are available for installation to the setup procedure? I have following line in my winnt.sif file OemPnPDriversPath="DRIVERS\via,Drivers\intel" The problem is of space on the CD. If I place expanded drivers in "$OEM$\$1\Drivers\via " and "$OEM$\$1\Drivers\intel" folders it works perfectly but I cannot accomodate these files on the CD I am working on. It is a 200 mb 8 cm cd which includes partitioning tools, boot manager installation & winxp installation as cd boot options.

Make it a habit of mapping that network resource to a specific letter & change the %cdrom% to the so mapped drive letter. I suppose this should should work.

What happens in the case the user cancels the initial screen displayed, makes some changes to the letters assigned to the cdrom or when the installation was done from a different cd & you simply want to install applications after such changes? Better option wopuld be to create an autorun file on the cd that will copy a small & selferasing batch file which will seek out the cdrom letter & run your %cdrom%\wpi\wpi.hta. This would work on absolutely any pc you come across. Even the one you have just installed the OS on. Neither is there any need to copy your wpi files to the hdd.

If you are going to use the wpi cd on the specific network ONLY you simply have to map the network resource to a specific letter like Z or N before starting WPI. I believe you could then hardcode the drive letter in your wpi scripts to install anything you want.

There is another post where the current version already does that & you don't have to worry about hiding the config button.

If it is fresh installation of the OS you are working with why don't you preassign a letter like "W" to the cdrom using diskpart in run_once? You can be pretty sure than it will be a long time before your usual range of d, e, f, etc are taken up by the volumes created on the fixed hdd or added on volumes like card readers, pen drives or anything attached to the USB port.

nLite by far is not a "do all" for everyone. You need to tweak the iso a little. Once you are finished with the nLite process you can extract the iso & make necessary chanees to the run_once file. Simply recompile with any good iso creating software & you are all done. You can extract the boot sector using something like bbie or the iso software itself.