gosh

You already asked this in http://board.MSFN.org/index.php?showtopic=9500 -gosh

Here's a more detailed post: First. i have a hexed uxtheme.dll slipstreamed. So right out of the box i can use unsigned themes. My cd is slipstreamed with sp1. Second, in my unattend file i have this: [shell] CustomDefaultThemeFile="%Systemroot%\Resources\Themes\SOFT.THEME" Third, in my unattend file i make sure it says OEMPreinstall=Yes, and OEMSkipEULA=Yes Fourth, i put my themes into $OEM$\$$\Resources. I put my wallpaper into $OEM$\$$\Web\Wallpaper\sandline.jpg Fifth, since you have to have a .theme file to make it default in an unattend file. I made a .theme file for every .msstyle. Below is my SOFT.theme file: As a side note, you see i used the .theme file to change the default screen saver. Below is a picture of what my desktop looks like when the unattended cd is done. I have to admit - it looks great! I hope that helps. -gosh

Have you tried using regmon or filemon to see where the activation is saved to? http://sysinternals.com/ -gosh

In some cases modifying the xp registry permissions could be a good idea. But in this case i don't think it would be a good idea to deny write to run. That would break about half the programs out there. -gosh

Regmon is your best friend . The xp registry guide has a how-to on using it. -gosh

What i would do is make an inf, right click on it and install it. Then save the registry keys. Here's a sample inf that imports 1 registry key; -gosh

Well it sounds like you got a command wrong. Run each command within windows xp until you get the error you're seeing. Reinstalling your hotfixes won't hurt a thing. -gosh

In the first 2 parts of my 'guide' to reducing the xp source, i kinda skipped over some stuff. Let me go back and fill in the empty pieces. Let's look at the boot folder. In my first post it was called BOOT, in my second post we renamed it to VOL1, and VOL2. What exactly is this folder's purpose? The BOOT folders purpose, as the name suggests, is to boot the computer. We made the folder by running winnt32.exe, but there's another way to make it. Hopefully someone savvy enough noticed that the BOOT folder is exactly the same as the 6 xp floppy disks extracted. That's why the BOOT folder has those files called disk101,disk102,disk103, etc. It's the identification files for the XP boot disks. When you run winnt32.exe, it copies these fake identification files to 'fool' xp into thinking you've put in all 6 xp boot disks. One website makes the BOOT folder by using xp boot disks, not winnt32.exe. See this site under the section 'Extracting the Boot Images to the correct folders'. In his site he calls the BOOT folder ROOT. Different name, same concept. Since the computer is booted from the BOOT folder, you can add stuff in this folder to use during cd boot. For example, in my cd i put expand.exe, chkdsk.exe, autofmt.exe in the BOOT folder, so when i use recovery console it won't ask me where these programs are. Another thing you can add is the server 2003 chkreg.exe file download it here. It allows you to repair the xp/server 2003 registry. -gosh

Here's the directory of my last cd: This was it's boot menu: As you can see, it has no i386 folder. For a CD based install, the $OEM$ folder needs to be parallel to the i386 folder. In most cd's this will be the root of the cd. But as you see it's possible to put the $OEM$ folder in a sub folder. Even though there are 3 options for XP home and XP Pro, i only have 2 $OEM$ folders. I get around your problem by doing this: My $OEM$ folder basically has 3 functions: 1 - Installs XP Power tools using %windir%\Pwrtoys\pwrtoy.bat 2 - Installs registry hacks using %windir%\Reg\reg.bat 3 - Installs software using %windir%\apps.bat VOL1 just does a regular install so it doesn't have a winnt.sif file. VOL2 does an unattended install. So it's unattend file has OEMPreinstall=No, and it has no GuiRunOnce section. VOL3 does an OEMPreinstall. So it's unattend file has OEMPreinstall=Yes, and the guirunonce section has this: So here's what happens: If i do a regular install, the $OEM$ folder might be copied to the hard drive, but it's not used so when setup is done it'll be deleted. If i do an unattended install, the $OEM$ folder might be copied to cd, but once again it's deleted when setup is done. If i do an OEMPreinstall, the $OEM$ folder is copied to the hard drive and used. The power of my method is it gives me great flexibility. For example, let's say i wanted to do an unattended install of XP, but not do any registry hacks. All i would have to do is remove Command1 from GuiRunOnce. Now power toys and software are installed, but no registry hacks. Another example is you could install all your hotfixes in a batch file, let's call it hotfix.bat. In one install you could process hotfix.bat under GuiRunOnce, in another install you could leave hotfix.bat from GuiRunOnce. This is why i don't understand why some people here put everything into 1 big batch file, you're limiting yourself. Keep everything seperated to allow flexibility. The only reason i have 2 $OEM$ folders is because of the differences between XP Home and XP Pro. if i wanted to make only an XP Pro cd, i would only need 1 $OEM$ folder. To sum up, the $OEM$ folder doesn't matter, only your unattend file. I'm sure this is very confuzing, but it took me a very long time to perfect this method. Don't expect to understand everything at once. -gosh

lol what? I didn't post my serial for nero or show to bypass registration or crack nero. I just posted how to import your serial through a .reg file that you can use in an unattended install. There's nothing wrong with that. -gosh

I posted how to register nero in an unattended install here Is that what you mean? -gosh

MPS Reports are reports that gather diagnostic data for microsoft. I really like them because they include useful tools that you might want to use for your unattended install. The tools let you dump processes to a file, inspect the boot sector, export user accounts, etc. This tool is also good to have on your cd, to help diagnose problems. I've used it in the past to find out what spyware is on a system. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en -gosh

There's no reason to do all those reg hacks. Just open your .theme file in notepad and you can customize all that. If my memory serves correctly, you have to have the [VisualStyles] a certain way. Check ref.chm to make sure the command is typed correctly. As a side note, the theme updates the HKCU\Desktop key too. -gosh

ProvideDefault will prompt you for everything with the default value filled in from your unattend file. the only thing providedefault WON'T prompt you for is the product key. I've used it before, it's nice because if you let a friend borrow your cd he can change the computer name, etc. -gosh

There's an unattended switch to make XP only copy like 2 wallpapers over, check deploy.chm. There's also a switch to make dllcache empty - the value is SFCCache= i believe. Here's a win2k/XP trick that's very useful: With setup running press Shift +F10. This will bring up a cmd window. From this window type notepad setuperr.log, and i'll bring up the error log in notepad. You can also type taskmgr from the cmd prompt to get taskmgr. From this window you can end task on anything. You can also press Alt + Tab. I use this to make sure only setup is running, not something else. -gosh unattended Guru

Good tip, i've never heard of that before. -gosh

cmdlines and svcpack run under the System account. Any registry chagnes are written to default registry hive. -gosh

The xp zip folder support isn't too bad. To enable it type regsvr32 zipfldr.dll -gosh

What's easy is subjective. To you, using outdated floppies might be fine. For me, i like having everything on 1 cd. I avoid floppies like the plague. Floppies always seem to go bad on me. Besides, this site isn't for regular installs. If you just wanted to do a standard install, support.microsoft.com would be the site to use. -gosh

The help file says Yes. -gosh

From experience ive found if you install from the hard drive it'll give you that message, if you install from CD it'll prompt you where you want to install to. It's not a bug it's a "feature" -gosh

the .img file is just the boot sector. It shouldn't matter what language youre using. -gosh

Even if you disable autoupdates, the autoupdate service still runs. I recommend manually disabling the service. -gosh

The unattend switch would be ProvideDefaults i believe, instead of FullUnattended -gosh

You should be able to remove IE in XP by editing ie.inf. I haven't tested ie.inf, however i have removed outlook express by editing msoe50.inf without any problems. -gosh