Bezalel

Is there any way to view Power Point files from within the MCE Shell? It would be interesting to setup MCE in a Theater/Classroom.

If anyone wants to rewrite the tutorial PM me and if I like it I'll replace the origional tutorial.

SFC runs a full scan at T-9. If you leave the origionals where SFC can find then they will be restored.

Yes.

Not having any OEMBIOS files has the same effect as having the generic files. If you still want to have the generic files you can put them in \$OEM$\$$\System32.

This thread is intended for people who have PCs from multiple manufacturers. If you only have one computer or all of your computers are from the same manufacturer see http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=63258 for information relevant to your situation.

I prefer CRC32 because it would avoid long filenames even though its not as unique as MD5. I have a CRC32 function from freevbcode.com but haven't tested it fully

OK. its on my todo list but it won't be implemented until after I implement CRC32. The next version will be written in Visual Basic. The collection portion will be a wizard written in version 2005 and the deployment portion will be written in version 5.0 with no UI.

If you delete one of the oembios files from the system32 folder will SFC restore them from the dllcache or will it connect to your RIS and get the generic files?

I'm not concerned with disk space since identical files are only written once to the CD. Implementing this would require hardcoding the manufacturer names in the script (I don't want to do this) or maintaining a database (too much work for too little benefit).

I will trim the string to remove leading and trailing spaces in a future version. Partial matches are hard to code and if I ever implement CRC32 it will be impossable to implement partial matches.

Because Findstr may find more than one "Manufacturer" line (Bezalel reported so) and you don't want to iterate on all of them but just take the 1st one (which hopefully is the right one). Hence the GOTO once the job is done. Since SMBIOS.EXE always reports the structures in numerical order the first manufacturer to be encountered is in the system structure (Structure type 1). according to the SMBIOS spec there must be 1 and only 1 structure of type 1. Structure Type 0 (BIOS) does not contain a manufacturer field. The Following Structures may also contain a manufacturer: 2 Base Board 3 System Enclosure 4 Processor 22 Portable Battery 30 Out-of-Band Remote Access 39 System Power Supply

The opening post has a script that reports the manufacturer, model, and a hex representation of the manufacturer. The filenames should be the same as the hex representation of the manufacturer but without the spaces. In the future I plan to create a folder with these names and leave the filenames intact.

Pro has win51ip as its tagfile and Home has win51ic as its tagfile. If you just replace the oembios files on the Dell Pro CD You will have a prectivated Lenovo Pro CD

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=63258 You can use all the files on the Dell CD except for the oembios files.

The keys are mostly interchangable between manufacturers. (I've heard of isolated cases where keys were not interchangable but I am more inclined to beleive there was a user error in these cases.) For the benefit of businesses that no longer have access to the manufacturer's keys there are a few keys published at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...y/oempreac.mspx. Before Feb 2005 manufacturers did not always include their keys in the recovery media because the sticker-key could be used to activate online. (They only cared about the first boot experiance, not recovery experiance.)

You can always add the following line to your own code MfgHex=Left(MfgHex,8) I will not be adding this for the following reasons: It is possible that a manufacturer uses different oembios sets for different lines. (if this becomes an issue I can always rewrite the code to include the model#) If you are using identical sets they will only be stored once on the CD Limiting your self to 8 characters only compares the first 4 charachters of the name and once I go over 8 charachters, I don't care how far I go If there are users who have a problem with long file names than I'd suggest hashing the manufacturer string with CRC32 (I was origionally hoping to use CRC32 but vbscript doesn't have the correct datatypes to perform CRC32)

When I need to autologon with domain credentials I don't set autologon in my winnt.sif instead I import all the nessasary registry values from cmdlines.txt this way the local administrator profile never gets created.

I plan to add oemlogo.bmp support in later versions and to genererate oeminfo.ini from the SMBIOS table. I have no immediate plans for wallpapers but will provide a method to call a manufacturer specific batch files.

I am creating a repository for OEMBIOS files. The entrypoint will be http://www.oembios.net. I don't have the hardware to test these files so PM me letting me know if they work for you or not (if not please specify your PCs model#). If you nedd a specific OEMBIOS set or have one to offer please PM me. I have the following sets and will post them as they are ready: Acer Compaq Dell Dell (Server) E-Machines HP IBM Samsung Sony Toshiba Note: I will not be able to reply to all messages but will read them all.

Replacing the oembios files in the source won't make WFP use your replacement files (somehow it knows that the replacement files aren't origional) it only prevents WFP from finding the origional files to restore. The current version is located at http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&sho...ndpost&p=512579.

This method wouldn't work for me bacause at T-9 setup starts a full scan which would just restore the origional files. You might be able to use parts of my script to determine the manufacturer and call wfpreplace.exe. My goal at this point is to replace the files and have the replacement files protected by WFP.

Are they generated form the OS, the Hardware, or Both ? The reason i'm asking, is most of the oembios files i've collected are from Ghost/Restore images from PC's I no longer have. Which means i don't have the ID's to go with them, so i'm at a loss as to how to name them. I'm hoping you know the answer ito this, as it could save me a lot of messing around tomorrow, what with Ghosting/Restoring/Formating/Installing/Swearing/ Pulling Hair Out 'ing They are named based on the system manufacturer's name as listed in the SMBIOS table. You can look through this thread to determine how different manufacturers list their name in the SMBIOS table or use the script in the first post to find the manufacturer string. The name of the file should be the same as the hex string without the spaces. (Some manufacturer's use different strings for different models, in order for the CD to work you need to use the string of the target PC.)

What method are you using? Do you have seperate boot directories or are you replacing the files after install?

I had previously kept away from AutoIt because I thought it needed a runtime to be installed. Now that you have shown me the light, I'm adding AutoIt to my collection of development tools.