DPR

No way to delete them at this point of the setup ... IE, OE and Media Player shortcuts are created during the first login process with the help of the stub path entries inside the registry. They can all be found under "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components". You may delete the corresponding entries, but you should also keep in mind that this will skip some initializations of the mentioned apps. However - it's relatively safe to remove these entries. Stub-path GUIDs ... IE: {89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383} {26923b43-4d38-484f-9b9e-de460746276c} OE: {44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C} {7790769C-0471-11d2-AF11-00C04FA35D02} {881dd1c5-3dcf-431b-b061-f3f88e8be88a} MediaPlayer: {22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95} {6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6}

It's not very hard to create MST files. MST files are "transform files" i.e. files that contain differences to the MSI file. So it's e.g. possible to add the serial no for Office. If you simply want to modify/prepare Office for deployment then you could use the ORK (Office Resource Kit) provided by Microsoft. It contains wizards which will create an MST file for you. There're a lot of commercial tools which are able to create MST files. If you're looking for a free tool then you could use "Orca" which is part of the Microsoft Platform SDK. If you do want to have more information about the "Microsoft Installer" technology then you should use the Platform SDK. You'll find almost any information you need in there ...

Good point - you can also use "skip=2" to skip the first two lines instead of using "findstr". Whereas you're a little more flexible if you use "findstr" (because "findstr" automatically searchs for the "REG_" line) ... However, "findstr" supports regular expressions but doesn't support sub-groups and thus it's almost useless in our case ... so your solution is fine.

Your solution to get the CD-ROM drive letter almost looks like mine, despite I don't have to use the "temp.txt" thing ... http://www.MSFN.org/board/index.php?showtopic=10013&st=10

No - it's a bug in a inf-file of this hotfix ... You can use the "/t" parameter for a workaround. I.e. sth like: WindowsMedia8-KB817787-x86-DEU.exe /q:a /r:n /t:"%WINDIR%\Temp"

I think you mean "UIHost"="%WINDIR%\\Resources\\LogonUI\\custom.exe". But the problem is that the reg-files don't have a simple syntax for REG_EXPAND_SZ values. The above example would be ... "UIHost"=hex(2):25,00,41,00,4c,00,4c,00,55,00,53,00,45,00,52,00,53,00,50,00,52,\ 00,4f,00,46,00,49,00,4c,00,45,00,25,00,5c,00,44,00,6f,00,6b,00,75,00,6d,00,\ 65,00,6e,00,74,00,65,00,5c,00,45,00,69,00,67,00,65,00,6e,00,65,00,20,00,42,\ 00,69,00,6c,00,64,00,65,00,72,00,5c,00,4c,00,6f,00,67,00,6f,00,6e,00,20,00,\ 53,00,63,00,72,00,65,00,65,00,6e,00,73,00,5c,00,64,00,65,00,5c,00,53,00,75,\ 00,6e,00,73,00,65,00,74,00,20,00,43,00,61,00,76,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,65,00,\ 78,00,65,00,00,00 Let me quote the Platform SDK:

Yes it's a typo - I simply was too lazy to export the reg key. We need of course "\\" instead of the single backslash ... BTW: I recommend using a REG_EXPAND_SZ and path variables instead of absolute paths.

Well it does work perfectly for me. And I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work - the recovery console doesn't need any user specific data. Not everything M$ recommends is good and not everything M$ does not recommend is bad ...

That's not true ! I'm using a batch-file in cmdlines.txt to run the following line: start /b /wait %SETUPDRV%i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons /dudisable /unattend whereas %SETUPDRV% represents the CD setup drive. And it works fine ! Besides - the M$ article doesn't say it's not possible to run it from cmdlines.txt ...

Never mind ! The UIHost value isn't mentioned on "themexp.org". But you'll find a lot of helpful links and a forum on this page.

You'll find a lot of information regarding themes, logon screens, ... here: http://www.themexp.org @Alanoll: please quote correctly

AFAIK you need to add both. Oh not to forget - every volume has got 2 entries, a "\DosDevices" and a corresponding "\\??\Volume" entry. They're linked through their volume id !

By the way: here's my method to get the setup drive ... for /F "tokens=1-3*" %%i in ('reg query HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup /v SourcePath ^| findstr /r "REG_SZ"') do set result=%%k set %SETUPDRV%=%result%

That's of course correct ! The mentioned method is intended to be used for a specific home PC. It shouldn't be used for unattended corporate-setups ...

For all those who want to set/correct the drive letters before the installation starts here's the description: The mount manager loads the mount points out of the setup-registry if the key "HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices" exists. The hive used for the setup-registry is located in the "I386" folder and the filename is "setupreg.hiv". To change the drive letters you simply have to add your mount points to the hive. Since every drive has got a unique ID the best way to set the correct values is to import the necessary keys from a running system.

There's another method: simply set the drive letter of your CD-ROM to a fixed value. The mount manager is responsible for the driver-letter assignment. Load the hive "setupreg.hiv" and add the mount points for the mount manager (subkey "MountedDevices"). I'll post a more detailed description in a separate thread ...

Simply modify the "UIHost" value in the registry under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon". sample reg-file: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "UIHost"="C:\Windows\Resources\LogonUI\custom.exe" The better way would be to use a "REG_EXPAND_SZ" value and environment variables - i.e. path values like "%WINDIR%\Resources\LogonUI\custom.exe".