benzini

Hi Flayofish, Thanks for your post, however, if you try replacing 'en-us' settings with 'en-gb' you'll soon see the Arabic issue! ... myself and others have already tried all that you suggest and more to resolve this keyboard issue but to no avail ... I've tried an 'en-us' install and it does indeed work without fault, probably because this had 100% testing seeing as MS is an American company there's a long standing history of UK settings not working 100% ... its worth pointing out that this is not just with MS products, most software seems to default to US settings, printer drivers being the worst as they often default to 'Letter' paper size rather than 'A4' I've just finished 50% of our deployment, and so far all is looking good, I've even managed to modify the LTI to allow selection of an Active Directory OU from a drop down list so that the PC's install into their correct OU's allowing any assigned msi's to install with or immediately after the build, I'll post details about this for anyone thats interested when I get back to work on Tuesday / Wednesday. At the moment our LTI flows like this: 1. PXE Boot into WinPE 2. Select BDD / LTI Keyboard Locale (Grrrr!) * 3. Select the OU that computer installs into 4. System & Keyboard Locale (Grrrr! Again!) * 4. Select Applications to install (those that wouldn't repackage as msi's) 5. Confirm & Start Build I would love to get rid of the * items ... but it seems that we'd have to move our business to the US in order to do this! ;-) Cheers Benzini

Hi all, Ok, I've worked out a quick and dirty hack for 'Windows Vista Enterprise' items 1, 2 and 3 from my original post ... Im not saying this is in any way tested or for use in production environments, please dont blame me if your computer throws a fit and bursts into flames! ... Its a simple registry hack, deployed via an AD GPO as part of the user logon ... A batch file calls the .reg file with the following: regedit /s \\Server-Name\Path To Your Registry File\RoamLocalProfile.reg The .reg file contains the following: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "ExcludeProfileDirs"="AppData\\Local\\Temp;AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\OneNote;AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Burn;AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\CardSpace;AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Temporary Internet Files;AppData\\Local\\VirtualStore;AppData\\LocalLow;$Recycle.Bin" As you can see I've started adding a few 'excludes' ... I'd welcome any others that people come up with in order to tighten up the amount of data that roams. With this hack in place IE7 RSS Feeds, IE7 Browsing History and Gadget Bar changes all roam Cheers Benzini

Hi Specialk44 I wouldn't wish these little 'challenges' on anyone, but in a way I'm glad to hear you're experiencing the same as me! I get the LTI wizard issues even with an untouched Vista Enterprise .wim so its interesting to hear that yours seems to work fine, unless you mean you don't even use an unattend.xml? I think I've always deployed with one, so might have to try without. The Nvidia driver reg fix is actually only of use on the boot.wim, it seems that the boot image needs a little more memory assigned than whatever the default is in order to inject the Nvidia drivers before the Vista Enterprise install begins. So thanks for the info, but unfortunately it wont work in this case, might come in hand in the future though so I have noted it down! Again its odd that you're getting the Office runtime errors without any Office updates being present, In my case a fully updated Vista Enterprise would install an out-of-the-box version of Office 2007 Enterprise without error, I only found that the runtime errors started to appear after adding Office updates ... I'm yet to find the time to start pulling out a couple of updates at a time to eliminate the possible cause. It amazes me the level of customization you can achieve with Office 2007, some things I wouldn't even want to pre-set for our users as I feel they are personal preference, however the 2 simplest things I'd like to do is set the reading pane to bottom (so that I dont get a slew of calls asking me how to make it look like Outlook 2000!) and to set our corporate font as the default in Word ... you'd think someone at MS might have thought something like this would be a good idea? Obviously not ... Unfortunately I haven't dabbled in IPv6 as yet, but I'm sure someone here must have ... I have a similar thread with other replies at the following link ... might be worth keeping an eye on both posts for developments All the very best Benzini PS: I'm one week away from deployment ... I'm starting to seriously consider my options & hacks I'll need in order to get this delivered on time ...

I'm currently having an issue injecting Realtek HD Audio drivers (R1.72) into a Vista Enterprise x86 LTI The onboard sound is a Realtek ALC880 chip, I've added the driver to the 'Out-Of-Box Drivers' in BDD 2007, they get copied to C:\Drivers during deployment but Vista decides that its own MS HD Audio Vista RTM drivers are more up-to-date (or have better signing / certificates?) and thus the drivers aren't used, even when forcing an install of the R1.72 drivers with: setup.exe -s the drivers gets replaced on re-boot with the default MS HD Audio Vista RTM drivers ... Has anyone found a way of forcing driver deployment in situations like this? All other drivers I've added to Out-Of-Box Drivers (Nvidia Graphics, Realtek Nic, HP Flatbed Scanners) are deploying fine ... Cheers Benzini

Hi Largo, Unfortunately I had already tried what you suggest, I re-tried it yesterday just to be sure but I still get Arabic (101) if I set the following in the bootstrap.ini KeyboardLocale=0809:00000809 SkipBDDWelcome=Yes On the Office 2007 issue, yesterday I re-downloaded the 18 .msp updates in the Office 2007 'Update' folder, all are official updates, however during deployment I still get the 3 error boxes and sidebar corruption. I guess its time to start eliminating updates until the problem stops. Here's the list of updates: kb932080, kb933493, kb933688, kb934062, kb934173, kb934390, kb934391, kb934393, kb934395, kb934670, kb935514, kb936509, kb936514, kb936558, kb936646, kb937494, kb937608, kb938888 Would anyone be so kind as to test the BDD 2007 side of things (ie. pretend that you're deploying in a en-GB environment if you're not already) just to confirm the issues described? I've had a friend build a BDD 2007 environment (to remove myself from being the possible cause!) and he's confirmed the same issues, it would be great to get a third confirmation on this matter. I'm also having an issue with Realtek HD Audio drivers (for the ALC880 chip) at the moment, I've added them to the Out-Of-Box Drivers in BDD 2007, they get copied to C:\Drivers during deployment but Vista decides that its own RTM drivers are more up-to-date (or have better signing / certificates?) and thus the drivers aren't used, anyone found a way of forcing driver deployment? I feel so close to finally being able to deploy, and yet I'm being tripped up by some seemingly simple issues ... Cheers Benzini

I'm currently in the process of testing our deployment and have been finding a few strange issues, so I thought I would post a log of them here to: 1) Possibly get some assistance from others who may have found the same issues 2) Update this thread with any solutions I find so that others might benefit from my ability to act like a guinnea pig ... So, here goes ... BDD 2007 LTI: 1. If you enter the UK keyboard code ( KeyboardLocale=0809:00000809 ) in the bootstrap for an LTI it selects an Arabic (101) Keyboard layout instead. 2. If I use the following in LTI rules: SkipLocaleSelection=Yes UILanguage=en-GB UserLocale=en-GB KeyboardLocale=0809:00000809 It seems to be ignored and I get a window immediately before the installation starts asking me to confirm my keyboard, language and locale, once Vista has installed I then have 2 input locales, English (United States) & English (United Kingdom) ... the only way I seem able to get around this is not to use 'SkipLocaleSelection' allowing me to manually select the locales which then installs Vista correctly with with a single, correct locale: English (United Kingdom) 3. I'm deploying an Nvidia graphics driver via BDD, in order to make this happen I've had to use the registry hack mentioned here. Does anyone know of a way to set this so that each time I rebuild our .wim boot image the registry key will automatically be included, rather than having to remember to mount the image and insert it each time. Office 2007 Enterprise: 1. When installing Office 2007 with .msp updates in the 'Updates' folder, 3 Runtime error boxes appear each reporting, Error: 'System' is undefined ... at the very same time the sidebar gadgets corrupt. Despite the errors Office 2007 seems to install fine, but it concerns me that something isn't quite right ... Office 2007 deployed without any .msp updates installs without error. 2. Has anyone found a way to default the Outlook 2007 Reading Pane to Bottom (or any other position) for all users? 3. Has anyone found a way to set a default font in Word for all users without resorting to fiddling around with Normal.dotx, or is that the only way? Windows Vista Enterprise: 1. When a user with a roaming profile subscribes to RSS feeds using IE7, the very next time they log on the feeds have disappeared, this seems to be caused by Microsoft deciding to save RSS feed information in 'local settings' which obviously doesn't get saved into a roaming profile. Has anyone found or developed a work around for this? FIXED - See post #7 2. When a user with a roaming profile adds extra gadgets to the Sidebar, the next time they logon the gadgets have gone, this seems to be the same issue as mentioned above, Microsoft saves the Sidebar settings in 'local settings' Has anyone found or developed a work around for this? FIXED - See post #7 3. Browsing history also suffers from the above issue, its starting to become clear to me how Microsoft achieved the speed increase when roaming users log onto a pc ... they simply prevented a bunch of useful settings from roaming FIXED - See post #7 4. As I'm deploying in a business environment I have already embeded our company logo as 'user.bmp' into the Vista .wim this is then assigned via a group policy to all our users in order to ensure its the default user picture, however I'd really like to have the same logo showing in the 'user picture box' after pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL (before a user logs on) has anyone found a way to replace the transparent sqaure with a logo prior to a user logging on? That's probably enough for now ... as I say I'll keep posting back as I find more issues or solutions Many thanks Benzini

Hi all, I'm currently testing Vista Enterprise deployment using BDD Lite Touch and wondered if any of you have come across solutions to the following problems. 1. If using BDD you have to let BDD manage the partitioning of the HDD, if anything is entered in the unattend.xml the final stages of the deployment fail, however, BDD opts to use the entire HDD whereas I would prefer to have 2 partitions ... has anyone developed a script to re-size and re-name drives once deployment has finished or found a way to use the unattend.xml without deployment failing during the final stages? 2. Has anyone found a work around for setting a UK keyboard at the very beginning of the deployment process, currently if you enter the UK keyboard code in the bootstrap it selects an Arabic Keyboard layout instead. 3. As we are deploying in a business environment we have already embeded our company logo as 'user.bmp' into the Vista .wim this is then assigned via a group policy to all our users in order to ensure its the default user picture, however I'd really like to have the same logo showing in the 'user picture box' after pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL (before a user logs on) has anyone found a way to replace the transparent sqaure with a logo prior to a user logging on? Other than those issues, everything is looking good! Thanks in advance Benzini