hoehne

I tried things again. This time I did one nlite session. slipstreamed SP3 in, then did the driver and addon packs as well as WMP11 directly from nlite. Still invalid CD key. This is frustrating as hell as I just don't know enough about this stuff to know why it won't work from a Vista machine. Any other suggestions?

Like many others out there, I am trying to use a second computer to create a slipstreamed XP install disk. The computer I am running nlite from is a new laptop with Vista 32bit home. My XP CD is a purchased CD and is the SP1 version and I have slipstreamed time and again to add SP2 and post SP2 updates. I have even in the past slipstream SP3 RC on the disk and had a successful install, but all of these previous attempts were done using nlite and running on the XP machine I was updating. So there is no question my key is valid. I have run nlite from Vista in the Win XP SP2 compatibility mode as well. The end result is that I am told my CD key is not valid with is not true. My nlite install begins with importing the XP cd using nlite. Slipstreaming SP3 on the disk. Closing nlite and using the WMP11 slipstream too to put media player 11 in the install. Restart nlite and put several update packs and Addons including IE7 and others from RyanVM website. I add my user account info and make some basic tweaks for how things look, but do not remove or disable any components. I also add in the drivers for Raid, IDE, motherboard, printer, etc. I write all this out to an ISO using nlite, transfer the ISO to my desktop and run VMWare virtual machine to try it out using the iso as the boot CD rom. Four attempts have been made, no success yet. Originally I just ran nlite and did not use the XP SP2 compatibility mode. I tried this twice before seeing that I should do this. Then I ran it in that mode, no success. I then put the WMP11 slipstreamer in the XP SP2 compatibilty mode as well and still nothing. Some people have updated to SP2 first then SP3. OThers say not to do that. How do you make this work because the searches I have done have not provided the answer or information I need.

Ok, I see that this tweak works while adding the registry entry. How or when or what method do I use to load the tweak so that these folders exist for my first login? I have been adding an hkcu.reg tweak in the cmdlines.txt file as "REGEDT32.EXE /S hkcu.reg" "RunOnceEx.cmd" Is this the way and time to load registry entries and tweaks for all accounts? Thanks for your input.

I have tried to add the keys as suggested before even posting to the website. However, things don't seem to work because the actual changed keys are HKEY_USERS\S-1 keys. If my user account is created during the unattended install, I do not believe the keys you suggested will work. If anything, these keys need to be created before the user accounts are created. I am trying to load those "generic" keys at the T-12 mark of the install, but am not sure if those are loading properly or not. As for not being secure, what is not secure about that location? I am the only user on the computer and if it is a big deal, it is not a problem to create the desktop, favorites, and other folders within the default "My Documents" directory. I had done that in the past, but was just trying to have a more direct path to my folders. Any other suggestions on how to get this to work? Thanks

I would like to change the folder structure of windows during installation so that everything of importance on my computer is located in one place, the My Documents folder. My goal is to create a folder structure as such: c:\My Documents c:\My Documents\Desktop c:\My Documents\Favorites c:\My Documents\My Pictures This can be done after the installation by modifying HKEY_USERS\s-1 etc keys, but I want to do it before the first logon and want all desktop items to be in the My Document directories and so on. This way when I back up the My Documents folder, I know that I have backed up everything and frequent installs mean I only have to copy one main folder and everything is where it should be. I have not been able to find other posts about this, please let me know if there is a way. I have tried to take the special keys like HKEY_USERS\s-1 and rename them to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ etc and load those at the T-12 install slot, but this does not work. How do you convert a s-1 key to one that is usable for all users or at least the primary user account? Thanks in advance.