IcemanND

Ok, let's get some more details on what customizations are done to a machine when delivered to the end user and they answer your pre-deployment questionnaire. So what questions are asked and what possible changes are done as a result of the answers.

there are a number of different file explorer applications that work within PE, bsexplorer, freecommander, A43, Xenon to name a few. You can even get a sudo start menu using the PortableApps menu from portableapps.com

I believe what he is after is having a machine built at an OEM (like Lenovo or Dell) and having them put their base system build image on it. Which by the sound of it is pulling the image from somewhere on the hard drive or is it going to come down over the network?

Check out VMWare they just released version 7 yesterday, I haven't been able to get it yet as work hasn't gotten our license numbers yet but it is supposed to be Win7 compatible so I would have to assume the new tools would have a working driver.

So I have a custom build that I have to create for a specific project. Details: Host OS: Vista 64-bit Enterprise, only able to launch 2 VM's in VMPlayer. Hard drive partitioned, 40gb, 260gb. VM 1 - XP Pro locked down so IE 7 is the only application that launches and the VM shuts down when it is closed (or crashes). 10gb virtual disk on c: partition. VM 2- (for now) XP Pro, will be a full production and fully accessible OS (may do Vista at some point). runs on physical disk in 260gb partition. Yes, I know there are other ways to do this but they want free. Not counting my time. So Host OS and VM 1 are set up and everything is working as it should. Now we run into the snag. Trying to install XP to the physical disk from VMWare 6.5 you get and error that "operation on file "\\.\physicaldrive0" failed", So reading the documentation to make sure I've met all the requirements I find I forgot to remove the drive letter from that partition. Fine, done. Same error on the next attempt. So I try full disk instead of a partition, thinking maybe it will let me select the second partition that way, no go, same error. I beat Google up, down, left and right, and all I find are people having the same issue and a bunch of people doing it with Ubuntu as the host os. VMWare is just as helpful. So I figured it out and for the next poor fool who tries this here is what you do. It is so simple it is not even funny. Ready for this? Create the partition as a second primary partition (which I had done previously). Now don't format it. (Simple right, heaven forbid they mention this in the VMWare docs) Create your VM using the custom option, select "Use physical disk" on the "Select a Disk" config page, select your desired disk PhysicalDrive0 in my case, select "Use individual partitions", then select the desired partition, showed as FAT16 in VMware but it is actually RAW. Now proceed on through as you normally would when creating a Virtual Machine. Hope some one else finds this useful so my half a day wasted wasn't totally fruitless.

OK, OK, I'll turn the spell checker back on.

Add the tokens option to the for command. for /f "tokems=*" %_ in ('dir /ad /b c:\dir\*') do dir "c:\dir\%_\*.*"

Duplicate. Reply here: http://www.msfn.org/board/cycling-xp-pro-3...35.html&hl=

I had no problem running my DriverBackup utility on my Win7 x86 system, you have to right click and select "Run as Administrator". It doesn't like my x64 system, or at least not the drivers that have 64-bit files. Hopefully I'll get a chance in the near future to do a rewrite and include 64-bit file searches.

Actually it might be an issue with either the source or destination hard drive. I normally use Ghost for my imaging, (at least in the recent past, switch to WIMs recently), but every time I had this error during imaging or later after a machine had been deployed we found that the hard drive(s) were in a state of failure.

sorry missed which forum this was in when I posted. but there are numerous sidebars for XP tools, google vista sidebars in XP returns a bunch thoosje as the top hit.

for /f %%_ in ('dir /ad /b from\ab*') do xcopy from\%%_\*.* to\%%_\ /s /e

http://addgadget.com/ if you don't mind it being a desktop gadget.

With the image mounted edit c:\winpe_x86\mount\windows\system32\startnet.cmd and add your own commands to the end of the file to automate functions at startup.

When you did the wireshark trace did you do it from both ends? from client trying to get to server, and from server watching for client? what does tracert return?

Not sure about the HWIDs but had a similar issue on a new IBM server recently, the monolithic drivers (their RIS drivers) from the Broadcom website worked for it, after rebuilding the WinPE from scratch, couldn't just load the drivers into my existing PE boot wim. But I don't recall seeing that they had these in a 64 bit version, didn't look into the inf file though to see if it did both.

Any firewalls in place (hardware or software) that may be blocking access, or a rule was in place before to only allow that access to the previous ip-address?

Not trying to promote my own work, and you may have read so we will use it for and basis of the discussion since it is right here on the forum. http://www.msfn.org/board/guide-creating-w...p;view=findpost Though it was initially written for capturing XP systems it works the same for Vista. If you followed through the basics to step 14 on page seven you should now have an ISO burn it to a CD. Now boot your reference machine (the vista machine you want an image of) from that CD. On that machine verify you have network connectivity, ipconfig is all you need to run and see that you have a network address. If you don't you'll need to install the network drivers, page 8. Check to see that you can see the hard drive, simple dir c: will work, if no,t again see page 8 and install the mass storage controller drivers. Now go to page 10, capture to a network file share. Map a drive letter to your file server, net use i: \\myserver\fileshare now use imagex (which is on the cd if you followed the instructions through step 14, and capture your image to I:, as described in step 6 on page 10. Similar steps are on page 14 to restore or deploy the image to the target machine.

It is all personal preference. I know people that swear by every version of Windows OS since 95.

Never had an issue related to installing or running SP3 on new installs or old installs. If you've tweaked or hacked your system you'll want to avoid updating to it of find the SP3 equivelents of your tweaks and hacks.

All it does is open a folder browse window and then tell you if what you selected exists or not.

I've had this issue with OLE (Object lining and embedding) Try these commands from a command prompt, if you are using vista run the command prompt as administrator REGSVR32 /S SENDMAIL.DLL REGSVR32 /S OLE32.DLL REGSVR32 /S /I SHELL32.DLL

You can get a site license for the UIU if you are going to want it for a corporate type environment.

I've used the Universal Imaging Utility, it provides a database of drivers for mot machines, and it's own methods for changing the HAL. Making images compatible with any of the ACPI compliant HALs. I works pretty well if you are not interested in collecting drivers and scripting around the HAL switching issues, etc.

I was also referring to installed software firewalls. Other security software i.e. virusscan that may block ports/utilities, etc.