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I do it with a single line of code for %%i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do if exist %%i:\win51ip.SP2 set CDROM=%%i You can replace the file details to look for as per your requirements. Please note the missing ":" in the set command. Reversing the order of the alphabets would be a better option since the cd drive letter usually takes on a character after all the volumes are mapped. In this case there would be no errors in the event of finding a similarly named file in the root of a local volume. If you create your volumes after installing the OS it creates another problem, i.e. the volumes will be assigned letters following the cdrom which might turn out to be "d:". So what I usually do is assign the cdrom drive letter "W" from run_once file using diskpart. On a single cd drive systems this invariably is volume 0. I use a utility called wineject which takes on simple switch. The code is ... wineject -open w sleep 10 wineject -close w wineject & sleep.exe of course are external files & freeware.

I worked out a way for the installation cd to eject and replace it with the another one. I do it through 3 self ereasing cmd files & a utility called wineject. Actually in my case the installation of main os is finished from 1st cd. I have changed the autorun.inf to display a page where I have choices of other CDs that the user may want. Clicking on the selected button will eject the tray, there will be a delay of say 10/12 seconds & then it will retract the tray. You can then check the volume label of the cd to verify insertion the correct cd. If it is the wrong one it can loop and eject the cd again. As the next step it can either autorun from the cd itself or you can start the next process as per your requirements. I have posted a part of the code in CDSwitch thread. You can modify it any way you want.

Simply use freeware DriverMax to extract all the drivers, add them to the drivers directory & point to the inf files in winnt.sif. Works absolutely perfectly.

I found a freeware package called DriverMax which does a fantastic job. In fact I use this to extract installed drivers & use them to create customised FULLY unattended installation CDs for the clients for their specific machines. Works absolutely flawlessly.

Perhaps the answer I am looking for may be found in this thread. I am working on a 200 mb unattended mini xp installation. I have afncy for these 8 cm pocketable CD media. Space wise I can include all the drivers I want on this Cd after creating self extracting cab executables, with space to spare. Now my questions are... 1. Where can I get the list of <hwid> like *PNP09FF. 2. Will this work with unsigned drivers? Any help would be appreciated.

Your last link "maddogsw" responds with "Page Missing" message.

I use BCDW 2.0a exclusively. There is aplace to define your default option as well as timer settings - whether on/off and duration of time delay. The default could be one of the boot images on the CD rom. It also supports options of Power Off ( works with ATX), Reboot, Boot from Floppy, Boot 1st HDD, Boot an ISO umage. Never had a problem with it.

How difficult is it to put 2 different OSes requiring I386 folders in the root under EZBoot? Do you think it is worth the effort?

Acronis boot CDs from what little experience I have - CD created from Disk director suite for instance - reside entirely in the boot sector which may extend upto 30 mb. Even if one were to open the folder there is nothing visible in it.

Why do you copy the entire folder to the hard disk? Unless you want it for future use like repairs or additional features. You can simply for /if command to look for the cd rom & the command can point to this location. What I do is make a lot of changes to the partitions, at times adding external drives etc. So for my DVD -RW drive I set the letter at W: using diskpart command. For what ever reason CD/DVD drives are alwys "volume 0" in diskpart.

First of all for the video resolution to be correct youy video/graphic card must be installed cia the pnp driver route. Then there is a utility called videochanger takes command line switch in the form of 1024x768x32@75 which should be self explanatory. You can change it to your requirement. I run it from runonce before the application installation. It works flawlessly. Your monitor must support this setting for it to work.

I have seen a DVD that contains at least about 30 different versions of WinXP, Win 2k BartPE including OEM versions & a whole lot of other stuff. The best part is every installation resides in a I386 folder. It was done with EZBSystems menu. From what I understand not a single setupldr or any other file is hacked. If you were to copy it on to thew hdd it would require close to 45 GB of space, so I assume it was compiled using cdimage from M$. Perhaps you can visit the menu system maker's site or contact one of their technicians to learn how to do it. I don't have the time nor the inclination to do it myself.

I suggest that you use some utility to monitor the voltages on your motherboard. Either something supplied by the mobo maker or Everest. I have experienced in past that voltages on even different cables coming out of the smps vary widely. Over a period of time these will deteriorate further. They can play havoc with your pc & data.

In the old times of dial up networking there used to be a utility that would keep sending out a ping request to whoever to keep the connection alive. I believe there is a similar utility also available for local networking to keep the connection alive. BTW first thing you have to do is disable the powersave option for the nic. Otherwise you will continue to face this problem.

Quite simple actually. This is assuming that you have an absolutely new unpartitioned hard disk. Following steps should see you through. First of all set the bios boot order to ide-0, ide-cdrom, whatever. Create a multiboot cdrom with something like BCDW. This should have 2 boot options. Default should be Windows installation & the other being a dos bootable image with gdisk paritioning utility. You can add suitable time delay like 10 seconds. When the system first boots it will automatically boot the cdrom. At this point you have to manually select gdisk partitining boot image. This is the only time user intervention is required. With gdisk you can predefine and create all kinds of partitioning options from command line or batch file such as primary or logical, as percent of the hard disk or actual size, formatted/unformatted, etc . If you use the free 4dos.com as your command shell you can also create checking functions & reboot when gdisk is finished with its task. You can leave the c: drive partitioned but unformatted & set as active. When the system reboots it will once again boot from the CD. The default option would be XP installation. So it will boot & start installing windows as defined in your winnt.sif unattended. You have to make sure that bootfix file is removed from the custom cd compilation otherwise it will try to boot from HDD. You can run a runonce.cmd which will format your other partitions to whatever you want like ntfs or fat32. You can also use diskpart in runonce to assign a different drive letter to your cd rom as well as other volumes. The runonce file run from the startup folder can end with a delayed shutdown /reboot instruction & be a self deleting one with the last line being "del %0". You can copy another self deleting .cmd file to the startup folder which will run a utility which would ask you to change the owner and organisation details as well as change the xp registration number after the next boot. You have essentially created an installation cd which is completely automatic except for initial bios setup & 1 keystroke at first cdboot.

Recently I came across an nlited version of Win 2K. The whole iso is only 65 mb & practically most of the services, substantial amount of hardware support & software have been removed. I must admit the installation takes just about 7 minutes & boots up very fast. Unfortunately printing is one of the services removed which I need. Any pointers or suggestions as to how I can put this service back into the distribution or install it as an ddon? Any help would be appreciated.

See if you can set your sata channel to ide mode. It depends on chipset & bios. On original intel motherboards with ati chipset you have to choose sata or pata. Set ir to sata & you have errors. Set it to pata & the system works but is practically dead. However on my asus board with phoenix or ami bios & intel 945 chipset I could set it as combination - with support for both. The installation went on without a hitch.

If you are prepared tpo experiment what you can try is using gdisk partitioning software which runs under dos. Under dos you can do a whole lot of testing to do what you require. Once the necessary formatting is done you can theoretically start winnt.exe with necessary switches to start windows installation. BTW I have never been able to install xp from any version of dos. Always got some error message or other. What I have worked out is a method to completely automate installation of xp on a fresh machine with a new hard disk, also partitioning it exactly as I want in the process. All I need to do is set the boot order in bios & 1 key press when the machine boots from cd. Of course this is possible only by creating a custom boot/install CD.

First of all you should be using some kind of boot manager or a disk manager software to mke the your installation partition of choice as active hiding all other partitions. Is it the standsrd windows 15 seconds reboot message or is it some thing different? If your system insisits on rebooting do check your runonce files sequence. There may be a command forcing the reboot.

Thnaks. I will try it out. If this works it will save me a whole lotv of headaches of creating scripts for copying & moving folders.

I am facing a typical difficulty. I have a job on hand where in I am required to supply new hardware, about 50 machines & install win2000 on all of them. The applications to be run are not compatible with XP. The client has the retail licenses collected over a period of time. Due to budgetory constraints all the hardware is not going to be the same. What I want to do is install a number of freeware applicatins that require installation as well as a number of applications that only need simple copying. I have tried to use the same directory structure as in Xp, i.e. $OEM$, $$,$1, $Docs & $Progs. For whatever reason I can't get the $Docs & $Progs folders copied to the system drive. Can someone guide me to a link or a site where I can get more info on the structure? Thanks for all & any help.

What I usually do is first delete all the sensitive files. Then run a freeware utility named cleandisk. Then I defrag the system & run the cleandisk again. This ensures that nothing can be undeleted & generally no remnants remauin either.

I use a utility called change.com to change the default time out from 30 seconds to 10 seconds in boot.ini With the same utility I can also add the following line ... multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode" /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog to get option of safe boot. If This is placed as the first choice it will automatically boot to safe mode.

Send me an email. I can mail it to you. I however prefer to use findcd.bat with findcd.com which work better for me. I have all three.

I was wondering if there is any such utility like nLite for Office XP? The full installation with SP-3 is around 625 mb. I want to add a number of additional utilities to the disk. Is it at all posible to cut it down to the basic applications & leave out the not required features? Mind you all I am trying to do is expand my knowledge base.