Bezalel

Here's Microsoft's official opinion.

Why don't you use the AddFontResource API call in gdi32.dll? In this case You don't need the font name, the API gets and applys the name.

Iwouldn't install a QFE hotfix unless I needed it.

Here is a quote from a page on the MS OEM site:

Old OEM SB packaging: Has a square COA available in 3 and 30 packs, sealed packs can be sold without hardware, individual copies must be sold with non-peripheral hardware or a PC. New OEM SB packaging: Has a round COA available in 1, 3, and 30 packs, sealed packs can be sold without hardware, individual copies must be sold with a PC.

Microsoft encourages users to share their SP2 Update CDs however they prohibit installing WSUS on a public server. There are two types of hotfixes. GDR (General Distibution Release) hotfixes are tested and supported by MS and available through the download center and various update software (WU, OU, AU, SUS, MU, WSUS, and SMS). QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) hotfixes are provided as-is to fix specific problems and should only be installed on computers that need them, these are only available by request through MS support.

Every Guest OS needs to be licenced. For Windows XP every vitual computer with a copy of Windows installed needs a licence. MS recently changed the licence terms for Windows 2003 and now you only need a Licence to use a virtual installation of Windows 2003. This change does not apply to Windows XP. Example: If you have 5 VMs with XP and 5 VMs with 2003 but you will only be running 1 of each at a time you will need 5 XP licences and 1 2003 licence. (This is in addition th the host computer's licence.)

Add a second boot option within boot.ini with differant OS parameters, for example /nodebug. You also need to create a service that checks if this parameter is being used and if so start shutting down unneeded services.

WinPE is good to have but not that important. The documantation is OK but I prefer the documentation that comes with Windows 2000. (The 2000 docs come in DOC format and the XP docs come in CHM format.)

Does numbering the driver folders actually make a differance when installing drivers. Won't Windows just install the drivers in the order that it finds the devices regardless of what order you provide the drivers in?

You can use the same CD for multiple PCs, any extra drivers on the CD will just not be installed.

The MUI Packs are only available through MS Licensing or with some OEM copies of Windows. You should not be distributing these files.

Installing from a hard drive is faster than installing from a DVD but you have to copy the files from the DVD to your hard drive first, and that also takes time. The two reasons I have for installing apps from a CD is because I don't want my end users to have access to some of the source files and some of the computers I build don't have room for the entire source files on their hard drives. Why run a cleanup script when you can run clean from the beginning?

I install most of my software from cmdlines.cmd called from cmdlines.txt. The programs I want to install from my HD are stored under \$OEM$\$1\installs\ and are called by %SYSTEMDRIVE%\installs\ and the programs I want to install from CD are stored in \$OEM$\installs\ and are called by .\installs\ (the working directory for cmdlined.txt is \$OEM$\)

Why did you wrap the VBS in an EXE?

How do the N editions remove WMP, do they have a differant txtsetup.sif or does the CD-Key determine if it will be an N edition? More importantly, how can I make my own N edition CD? (Don't say nLite, I want my OS to be recognized as an N edition)

oformat will alow a fast format on a new partition. I'm not sure if it works under NT but it will work in a 9x enviroment.

Yes it is a mistake and I corrected that page for more details see http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=63258

I wish I could use a DRAC card but there isn't one available for this unit. The 715N was Dell's first Windows based appliance and I guess thay didn't realize how important a local console is (the only ports on this unit is a serial port and 2 ethernet ports). The next model (725N) has PS/2, VGA, and bootable USB ports. The usual method for reinstalling is to download a floppy image with ghost and network support.

I am interested installing Windows 2003 on a headless server (Dell PowerVault 715N) with no CD-ROM drive and want to know if RIS will work for me. The server redirects the BIOS output to a serial port until the OS or PXE image starts the boot process. Once the boot process starts the redirection gets turned off and I will have no I/O access to the server until Windows is installed. I have experiance making fully unattended CDs but never used RIS before.

I think you want to use ProvideDefault. Unfortunately if a valid ProductKey is specified in winnt.sif ProvideDefault will skip that page

Create a file \win98\setup.exe on your CD. The contents aren't important, if setup finds this file it thinks it found a Windows 98 CD.

I built an unattended CD that installed Symantec AntiVirus from cmdlines.txt. On first boot I checked the virus definitions and they were up to date. I think you get online somewhere between T-34 and T-29

Use Bashrat the Sneaky's Driver Packs.

Since Dell computers don't have to be activated they use a factory key that cannot be activated on all their PCs. I'm not going to explain the rationale behind using the same key on all machines. If you are using your own (hologrammed) CD you cannot use the Dell factory key because it cannot be activated. If you use the COA key you will have to activate over the phone. Dell reinstallation CDs are only limited to Dell computers, they are not model specific. You can make your own "Dell" CD by adding the Dell oembios files.