mmarable

Not really. It'll find that it's running on a laptop, but you'll only get the basic settings for power. If you want to configure custom power settings, use Microsoft's powercfg commant line tool. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=324347 You can find the compressed version (powercfg.ex_) in your i386 folder of your XP install CD. You might need SP2 to get it, some of Microsoft's postings about powercfg imply that it was a new tool included in SP2.

If you're looking for a command line tool, this might do the trick. I've never tried it, but it may be worth a shot. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/Win...mmand-line.html I couldn't find it on the original site, but a search of the forums here came up with a couple of postings talking about this very subject. One of them had the file attached to it. You can get the utility here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=At...pe=post&id=2211

Yeah, you're really not going to have much success going from desktops to laptops and back. It's hard enough to get one ghost image to work on different desktops let alone jumping to a laptop. The HAL is the big gotcha.

Ximage is Microsoft's new method of installing Windows. Like mentioned earlier it's kind of like Ghost., where there's a single image file that gets put down onto the disk. But, unlike Ghost, Microsoft's Ximage is supposed to be hardware independant. With Ghost, you can't take the image for a laptop and put it on a desktop because the hardware (the HAL) is different. You have to have different images for different hardware. With Ximage, you have a single image that will work on all types of computers. You put it on any machine and then it runs a type of hardware detection and it then installs the needed drivers. At least that the general idea behind it. It's the same general idea (but not to be confused with) Dell's imaging solution, which is also called "Ximage".

To be honest, I expect that he's going to talk about automating the installation and not much more. I wouldn't expect a whole lot out of this. An automated install of Windows will run in about 15 minutes or less, so what ever he's promoting isn't anything record breaking. So, he's basing his benchmark against someone manually going through and doing an hand install. He's going to probably talk about the free tools like the deployment tools included on the Windows CD and how you can create aWinNT.sif file. It's so great and... I would not get your hopes up too much and expect any great Microsoft secrets to be divulged.

Okay, I'm using the SVCPACK method of installing hotfixes on my Win2003 setup. The problem is that it appears that only a small number of my patches are being installed. Is there a log created of what SCVPACK does that I can see what is or isn't working? I found a reference to to a C:\Windows\SVCPACK.log and another for C:\SVCPACK.log but neither are on my system aftr the install completes. Thanks

Well, it isn't going to work on the D600 and D610 laptops because, if I remember correctly, the 610 requires a different HAL than the 600 does. So the images are incompatible. I'm not too familiar with the GX270s and 280s, so I can't really say for sure, but I think the 270s use a uniprocessor HAL while the 280s use the ACPI HAP. So the images will have to be different.

I should know this, but I can't remember for the life of me, but how do I make a CAB file with multiple files and folders in it? I must be getting old and forgetful. Thanks Mike

To get it through the firewall here. It's goofy. I can upload an EXE but if I try to upload a script the office's "network police" block me.

You could set up the user's login script to execute this script to select which mode. You could set up the selection using a batch file. It isn't pretty, but it's functional.

Hmmm.... That's the WMI connection being opened. Is your WMI service disabled or stopped?

Okay, I completely rewrote the entire script to make it more flexible. What does it do? It parses a folder tree looking for INF driver files and creates the OemPnPDriversPath line from the findings. How does it work? When you run the application, you will be asked to browse to the folder containing your drivers (i.e. $OEM$\$1\Drivers). You will then be asked to select a folder to save the log and results files. It will then parse the tree you selected looking for INF files. If it finds one, it will add that folder to the OemPnP... line. If it finds another INF in the same folder, it bypasses adding it an additional time. When it's done it'll prompt you to open the location where you choose to write the log and result file. Just copy the line from the result file into you WinNT.sif and you're ready to go. I hope it's helpful. I got tired of having to manually put the OemPnP.. line together. I'm also working on one that will pull together the patches and dynamically create the SVCPACK.inf file, etc. What it will do it copy the patches to the SVCPACK folder and rename them to the KB######.exe name and add it with the switches to the SVCPACK.inf file. But that's a different story. -Mike OemPnPDriversPath_Builder.exe

Yes, this download location is just crawling.

Here's the info on SAV. It's specifically targetted at version 9, but version 10 works exactly the same. http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-s...niver=savce_9.0

Are these links any good any more? All 3 sites fail to find the file. Never mind, it took several tries but I was finally able to get through on the rapidshare link.

Does anyone know of a way to hide the Tools menu in IE? I'm trying to build a web kiosk type of thing and trying to limit what a user can do with the box. Thanks Mike Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on. --Zxian

I don't know if you can stop it from happening. The install is finding existing profiles with different security info already in place. What you may be able to do (if it fits in with how you're wanting to build this) is rename the existing D:\Docuements and Settings to something like D:\D&S.ORG, install Windows (it'll create new clean profiles) and then move your data back over.

My first question is exactly how are you running the install over the network. For example, if you boot from a floppy, USB key or CD and then run Winnt32 to do the install, then you're going to need to specify what unattended file to use. Like this: winnt32 /unattend:Z:\Unattended\unattend.txt What it sounds like it happening is that the setup is using the factory unattend.txt located in the I386 folder which does not contain any paritioning info. Like I said, it's only my best guess. With details on exactly how you're executing the setup over the network will help nail down the problem. Thanks Mike

You're going to have to integrate the RAID drivers using the TXTSetup method. http://unattended.msfn.org/intermediate/drivers/raid.htm

Thanks all. I'm working on adding in checks for the INF files, but that's led to a problem in places where multiple INFs exist in a folder. For each INF file it creates another entry in the OEMPnP... section. So, in my case I have the drivers for the ViewSonic monitors. ViewSonic bundles like 8 INF files into thier package. So, I get 8 "Drivers\Viewsonic" entries. Mike

Thanks for finding the type Bezalel. I'll fix that and see what I can do about checking for the INFs before adding the folder to the list. Thanks

I've been working on my unattended install CD and was getting frustrated with having to type out the OemPnPDriversPath line in my Winnt.sif file (I have a lot of drivers for my machines). I thought that it would be nice to have a tool that would parse my drivers tree and do it for me. So, I wrote this VBscript. It's pretty simple and not the most elaborate, but it gets the job done for me and I thought I'd offer it up here in case anyone else can find it usefull. The script will need to be in the root of you "XPCD" folder, as it bases everything off of this starting point. What it will do is locate itself in this folder, and then look in the $OEM$\$1\Drivers folder and cycle through all the sub-folders located there. It writes out the OemPnPDriversPath line into a file called "Drivers Path.txt" located in the root of the "XPCD" folder. Just cut and paste this into your Winnt.sif and you should be good to go. Where your "XPCD" folder is doesn't matter, nor does the name. The script will look for itself and then use that as a starting point. Not the strongest logic, but it works. The script is simple enough that if you want to put it in your $OEM$ folder, the changes are pretty straight forward to make it work. Anyway, feel free to play with it all you want. Thanks Mike Const ForAppending = 8 Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objFile = FSO.GetFile("Drivers Path.vbs") RootFldr = FSO.GetParentFolderName(objFile) 'WScript.Echo RootFldr SysDrvFldr = RootFldr & "\$OEM$\$1\" 'WScript.Echo SysDrvFldr DrvrFldr = SysDrvFldr & "Drivers" 'WScript.Echo DrvrFldr L1 = Len(SysDrvFldr) Set objTextFile = FSO.CreateTextFile(RootFldr & "\Drivers Path.txt") objTextFile.Close Set objTextFile = FSO.OpenTextFile(RootFldr & "\Drivers Path.txt", ForAppending, True) objTextFile.Write "OemPnPDriversPath=" & chr(34) ShowSubfolders FSO.GetFolder(DrvrFldr) Sub ShowSubFolders(Folder) For Each Subfolder in Folder.SubFolders L2 = Len(Subfolder.Path) StartPnt = L1 + 1 'WScript.Echo StartPnt StrLenth = L2 - L1 'WScript.Echo StrLenth DrvPath = Mid(Subfolder.Path,StartPnt,StrLenth) 'Wscript.Echo DrvPath objTextFile.Write DrvPath & ";"' & vbCtlr ShowSubFolders Subfolder Next End Sub objTextFile.Write Chr(34) objTextFile.Close PS - I've modified the code to fix the typos found.

I've always allowed 60 seconds to pass before rebooting my machine /T:60 and I haven't had any problems so far.

Snag, Do you mean it's been chugging along for 5+ hours copying the flat image up to the server, or is this a RIPREP upload? Either way something is very wrong.

The code I have in my post above is a batch file that does the job very simply. Put it at the end of your automated install. When run it will open a command window and prompt the user to key in a user ID (you can change the message to what ever you like). The user keys in an ID and hits ENTER. They're then prompted to key in a password. They type in a password and hit ENTER. The batch file then creates that account and gives it that password. The echos are for show. You can take them out and do the entire process with just three lines. Copy this into a batch file (for example "Newuser.bat") set /p name=[Please Type an ID:] set /p pw=[Please Type a Password:] net user %name% %pw% /add It's that simple. Now, you can add to it all you want. For example, echo a message that explains what you want them to do. ("You will now need to choose and ID and password to use this computer........"). You can have it echo back thier selections ("You've choosen to use jdoe as your ID and drowssap as your password......"). You can really get creative if you want. It's a simple batch file. Take this for an example: @echo off REM ============================================ ECHO You will now be asked to create an ID and password to use on this ECHO computer. Please remember your password and do not give it to ECHO anyone else. ECHO. ECHO You will first be asked to choose an ID. At the prompt type in the ECHO ID that you want to have and press the ENTER key. You will then be ECHO prompted to choose a password. Type that in and press the ENTER key. ECHO After you have done that the account will be created and the system ECHO will be rebooted. You can then log in using the ID and password you ECHO picked. PAUSE CLS set /p name=[Please Type an ID:] set /p pw=[Please Type a Password:] ECHO. ECHO You have chosen to use "%name%" as your ID and "%pw%" as your password. PAUSE ECHO. ECHO I've commented out the line that creates the account. REM net user %name% %pw% /add ECHO. ECHO I've commented out the following line that would restart the computer. REM SHUTDOWN -r -t 5 PAUSE EXIT Mike