IcemanND

you need to turn the power off the the usb converter when you turn the power off to the tray. Most trays have a plug (or may just be solder points if plug was not installed) which switch on and off woth the switch. The converter has to be disconnected from the machine either physically or by turning off poewr to it to have windows redetect it. I had the same problem with my firewire hot plug bays.

checkout the drivers forum here one of the members has created numerous driverpacks for use with unnattended cd's or other projects where you need drivers for lots of different hardware.

search your system for notepad no extension, it's gotta be somewhere in one of directories in the PATH variable before it gets to system32.

Actually I wasn't referring to making an unattended cd but that would work also. What you can do is collect all of the drivers you need for all 5+ systems you want to create an image for, place them in a folder and then use the OemPnPDriversPath in the [unnatended] section of sysprep.inf to tell mini-setup where to find the drivers. If you create a folder structure containing subfolders then you must give the full path to each folder separated by a semicolon. from deploy.chm:

it seems to depend upon what drivers you install for the mass storage section. I normally use a small portion of the Mass storage driverpack, but when I use almost all of it it gets created.

look in your profile folder (%userprofile%), I'll bet you have a file named notepad with no extension, or an unknown extension. Delete it and try again.

Check disk management first and make sure it is there, partitioned, formatted, and drive letters assigned. If it assigned a drive letter make sure you don't have a network drive mapped to the letter assigned to the drive. Windows will assign a physical drive a letter which is already assign to a network drive if without the network drive that letter would be the next letter to assign.

sysprepcleanup is created when you use sysprep to create the massstoragedrivers section. The entries are the items that sysprep puts in for the mass storage drivers which need to be removed after deployment to the new machine if they are not installed. So you don't need to do anything unless you want to manually do the cleanup for some reason you can run 'sysprep -clean' whith a sysprep.inf with this section and it will clean out the devices listed in the cleanup section.

why not just add all of the driver files to the first image so that they are there for all of the systems you are going to deploy to? Similar to having all of the drivers available for a unattended cd.

I'm going to guess that you are using the CALL command to run cleanup.cmd. Like CALL cleanup.cmd Which requires startup.cmd to remain open so that when cleanup.cmd finishes it returns to startup.cmd to run any further commands. If you don't use the CALL statement startup.cmd will continue to run and complete and close then cleanup.cmd shoud be able to delete it. Or you can create a shortcut to startup.cmd and place that in the startup folder which could be easily deleted since it is only in use when you click on it to run the cmd.

What model machine is it? I have found that most of the machines I have done in the last 3-4 years have all been ACPI uni/multiprocessor PC HALs. It may have been incorrectly detected or manually set. There is a method of manually changing the HAL but it is not supported by M$ and it has been known to cause problems.

You can advertise programs to user/groups/computers via Active Directory. You can also use SMS is you have it to advertise/push/pull software. Or you can add login/logout scripts which install applications if not found.

open device manager and look under Computer it will be one of six: ACPI Uniprocessor PC ACPI Multiprocessor PC MPS Multiprocessor PC MPS Uniprocessor PC Standard PC Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC You don't want one of the last two.

It all depends upon the HAL on your build machine and the correct HALs on your target machines. Using sysprep you can change between MPS uniprocessor HAL and MPS multiprocessor HAL, or ACPI uniprocessor HAL and ACPI Multiprocessor HAL. If your build machine is Uniprocessor (UP) add UpdateUPHAL="APCIAPIC_MP,%windir%\inf\hal.inf" to the [unattended] section of your sysprep.inf file then run sysprep, capture and deploy. change the MP to UP if it is built on a Multiprocessor and you are deploying to UP. In theory the same thing holds true for MPS HALs but I don't have any to try it on, just chance ACPIAPIC to MPS. I have successfully deployed an image built on a Dell Gx300 (UP HAL) to IBM thinkpad t43, x41, z60t, r51, Thinkcenter m51, m52, Dell optiplex gx100, gateway e4000, so far without any issues other than forgetting to have added all of the correct hardware drivers.

use CALL instead of GOTO and it will return. at the end of the called section send it to the EOF and it will return to the loop. ... ... ... Call :UUCDFOUND ) :UUCDFOUND commandx commandx goto EOF ... ... ... ... ... :EOF

Are there any errors in the event log about not being able to talk to your domain, authenticate etc.

are these local accounts or domain accounts?

find dial-a-fix.exe and try it sounds like some of your dll's need to be reregistered.

try this in cmd script: %date:/=-% will output the date with - instead of /

Your wireless settings are not kept most likely because your wireless card is being removed/reinstalled during the sysprep. Unfortunately there is no easy way to occomplish what you want ot do with wireless unless all of you machines have the same wireless. Many of the wireless manufactures have a config utility you can run to do this. But they only work for specific cards not all. At least this has been my experience when I was looking for a way to configure 802.1x connections on multiple machines/cards.

Do you get any POST beep codes when you turn it on? If not I would try another power supply, aside from CPU I've replaced more PSU's in AMD systems than any other component. They will appear to turn on but either get no video or not complete post. Try another PSU, I know you said it was new but that doesn't mean a thing.

if you are using XP pro, then deny permision access to the file by deleting all users from the security tab. Reboot and then add just yourself as a user with access and delete it.

can you be a little more specific on neither operaating system will boot. Error? Hangs with flashing cursor? Have you tried any switches like /IB to capture the entire boot record? WIM would probably be the best way to go.

all three, and any other mass storage device driver

even if dell won't send warranty parts you can still normally buy a cable from them and fix it yourself, or buy it fro ma thrid party.