IcemanND

Personally I use VMWare workstation and VMWare server depending upon if it is my machine or my work machine. Since Server is free I use it at home and work paid for the workstation license. But there is always Virtual PC, I found it to be slower to do the same things I did in VMWare so I stopped using it but worth looking at.

Unless you have installed the patch to prevent it yes, the administrator profile is copied to the default user when sysprep is run. The patch has to be purposefully downloaded and installed.

@ Stoic Joker- which version of key decoder did you use?

the unattended installation will only format the partition you put the windows directory on. It will not format multiple partitions.

You can either create and format the partitions before you run the windows installation, using Windows PE, dos etc. Or you can create them during the install manually. But the partition that the Documents and settings folder ends up on MUST be formatted prior to any account being created. I believe it works if you format it during t-39 but I have found it easier to just prep the drive from windows pe before I start the installation. Yes you can rename the Documents and settings folder to any valid folder name from winnt.sif with Profilesdir. I have mine d:\documents and settings, but I know people who have renamed it users and profiles. Some stupid programmers have been know to hard code "documents and settings" into their code for some reason but I have not run across this myself.

%* is all of the command line switches, so if you had: stub.cmd myapp.exe /dothis /andthat then: %0=stub.cmd %1=myapp.exe %2=/dothis %3=/andthat %*=myapp.exe /dothis /andthat

if you do this during the install you have to partition and format the drive yourself. The XP install will only let you format one partition. So you need to prep the hard drive before running setup and then have the installation leave the drive partitioned. I have been running my machine this way for more than a year and have had no problems with any applications installing or running with it configured this way. You are much better off doing this from the install than trying to do it after windows is set up, or at least before you have set up the user account that you want on D:.

What about adding a recovery partition to the machine, then the machine could be booted from that partition and restored locally. The latest Ghost Solution Suite 2 includes a Recovery Kit package that gives you a boot manager and a write only version of ghost.

@orev - can you try doing a manual decode with Keydecoder enterprise 2.28. Launch Keydecoder Click Settings menu Select Manual Decode Enter Product name (anything you want) Copy the registry data from DigitalProdID4 key into Digital Product ID field Click Decode And let me know if it properly decodes the key. I don't have access to a 64 bit version to test on. If it works I'll update the code. or export the registry key and change the digitalproductid4 key name in the reg file to digitalproductid and run keydecoder against the reg file.

post your svcpack.inf file maybe one of the the updates is missing a switch.

I know you have already invested in Ghost, etc. But what about something that just locks the machines down and prevents changes like Deepfreeze? I don't use the deploycenter, or the console but Ghost and Ghost32 can both be used with commandline switches to automate the process just have to run it from your bootable media. As I recall from reading you can schedule the ghost console to deploy images to a group of machines.

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers...&param=5021

can you post your entire winnt.sif file? Maybe we'll see something else then. Or if you ise your orignal cd with no updates does your winnt.sif file work from a floppy?

If you enter it maually does it work? Are other settings from your WINNT.SOF file working?

start will dell's website. check the drivers for your machine and windows XP. not all vendors are supplying XP drivers for the machines they are shipping vista on. If they are not there you will have to check the manufacturers website for that specific piece of hardware.

So you want to install Xp on your machine after making an UAXP cd? You'll need XP cd and license code and nLite not vlite. Make sure you can find all the drivers for that machine for XP first.

Ok, so I missed that. But I provided the link.

Yes you can, it depends upon what you want to boot into as to how you start of the windows installation. And wether you are talking doing the install from the local drive or a removable drive. To start the installation manually run Winnt.exe from 16-bit environment, WINNT32.exe from 32-bit environment. Just have to get your file onto the hard drive somehow, like with a disk image. If you are trying to do it from a removable drive you have to do a few more things. Search the forum for install from usb for more info.

You can also use the Windows Installer cleanup utility form Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 Won't remove the files but it gets rid of all the registry stuff.

You've already found the way to log CMD file execution. redirect command output to a file and use ECHO to log the command. Don't remember the DUAL commadn from the trash-80, but then I never bothered to log anything then, but I didn't care it would either run or it wouldn't then I went back and fixed it. Those were the days. Or you could rewrite it as a cscript and capture the output of the script.

sounds like you have the Dell Quickset utility running and set to enable/disable your NIC/Wireless when the cable state changes.

The keys are tied to certain types of installations. VLK, retail, upgrade, etc. each key is uniquely encoded to work with just the type of installation media it cam with. No key is on the cd unless an answer file was added.

try this: First check if the Automatic Updates and BITS is set to be Automatic and are both started in SERVICE.MSC. If not, start them and try update. If still error: 1. Stop services Automatic Updates and BITS in SERVICES.MSC 2. reregister dll's in windows system32 directory regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll regsvr32.exe wups.dll regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll regsvr32.exe MSXML3.dll 3. Remove the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder ... the whole thing. It will be re-created automatically by Windows/Microsoft update. 3. Remove the BITS data files under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\*.dat 4. Clean out all Event Viewer logs (EVENTVWR.MSC) The following key may be screwed up: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost in the right panel, there is an entry for netsvcs. Double click on it and make sure that BITS and wuauserv are both in the list (scroll all the way down). If they are missing, add them separately on a line to themselves Reboot. Check Services and see if Automatic Update and BITS are started. Try updates.

Welcome to th forum.

what errors do you get? or what errors are in c:\windows\windows update.log?