mmarable

To get our Dx10 image to work on the Dx20 line of Dells we had to swap the HAL during Sysprep. In our case we boot WinPE, lay down the Ghost image, rewrite the Sysprep.inf and then reboot the box.

Typically, if you set the SATA to emulate a standard IDE controller in your BIOs you don't need any SATA drivers to install and use Windows. I've used other Asus boards and haven't had any problems running the SATA controller in this "IDE Emulateion" mode.

I'm running WUD on XP32. The other lists seem to work fine. Is there any logging that WUD does?

I downloaded and installed the new English WinXP 64 list and when I try to download anything with it WUD crashes. I can still download using the ULs for x86 and Office 2003, so the application itself is fine. I downloaded the UL again but WUD still crashes with it. There's no error message, it just shuts down. Anyone else have this problem?

Do you have a link to more information, or the product itself? Is Microsoft charging for this like they are for the rest of the Office 2007 beta?

CompName.exe should do the trick for you. I'm also sure you could script it using WMI.

At the very heart of the matter, the differnce in HALs is what causes the problems. The older Dells us ACPI HALs (I believe) while newer models work on the Uniprocessor HAL. If you build a maching "from the ground up" Setup identifies which HAL is required and installs it. If you build on an ACPI machine then make a Ghost image of it, that image has the ACPI HAL in it. When you put it down onto a newer machine, Windows will have problems because it is now on a Uniprocessor machine, but it only has the ACPI HAL to work with. You can get creative and inject both drivers as well as change the HAL and use a single Ghost image on the various models, but it is a bit touchy.

Here you go. It's a tutorial that will take you step by step on how to add the install of Office 2003 to your unattended CD. http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/v...188263a6219eab/

Easy enough to do. Put something like this in your build scripts: Schtasks /create /sc daily /mo 1 /st 20:01:00 /tn Maintenance /tr "<path>\Reboot.cmd" /ru <admin user> /rp <password> This creates a scheduled task. The example above will run daily at 8:01pm and is called "Maintenance" in the Scheduled Tasks listing. /create - Creates a task /sc daily - specify the schedule as daily /mo 1 - sets it to run each day (as opposed to a "2" which would be every other day) /st - start time (in 24hr clock) /tn - Task name /tr - Task to run /ru - runas user /rp - runas user password In your case you'd want to use "/sc weekly /d SAT /st 00:00:01" to run it at 12:00:01 on Saturday mornings, as opposed to my daily at 8:01pm. Hope this helps.

What kind of installer does it use? If you're not looking to configure it, just do a basic factory install. I did a quick search of the forums here (man, search is great) and it seems that version 5.x uses an InstallShield installer, so you should have a real simple time with it. Just recored and ISS, or many vendors include a basic factory ISS with the software, and use it to install the client.

Here you go. This tutorial will take you through everything you need to know about silently installing your apps as part of you automated XP install. It will show you how to identify what type of installer a program uses and what switches are needed to silently install it. http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/38/ Personally, I'd avoid trying XPlode, WPI and nLite until after you understand the process. You'll be better able to troubleshoot problems if/when you do try them.

Sounds like WPI is what you're looking for. It's been quite a while since I've used it, but it does exactly what you're talking about. Now, if you're looking to create something yourself, your best bet would be a simple HTA.

I would probably plan on having to reinstall. I don't know how well XP will handle the HAL switch like that.

We use the Shared Computer Toolkit here at work. Yes, the Windows Disk Protection blocks anything from beting written to the system drive unless it is overriden. It works well in a domain environment like ours but it's even better in workgroup setups. It's free and it does the job well. It uses HTAs to make modifying the Registry to do things like block access to the Control Panel, or hiding/blocking access to the drives in Exploer, easy. If you're in a domain environment Microsoft has included a custom ADM so you can set everything via GPOs.

There are already several good topics covering unattended Vista installs. But, as with any beta software, a full and complete guide won't be possible until after the final release. Right now, much of what is possible doesn't work yet and with each release components are being added or altered in some way. Basically, what works now may not work later in the final release.

Take a look at a tool called "CompName.exe", it will pull the info you want and with a little batch file scirpting it will rename the computer. I used it to rename computers based upon the MAC address and/or the asset tag on Dell machines.

A theme file is just a standard text file. Open an existing one in Notepad and take a look. The quick and dirty way it so set up Windows the way you like it, with all your cursors, screen savers, icons and such, then save the custom theme file.

So, what you're looking to do is import Current User keys but only for specific users, right? Put the logic into the login script (or Startup script, your choice). Basically, if "Tom" import the keys, otherwise don't (IF %USERNAME% = Tom...). One script that runs for everyone, but has the ability to only affect specific users. Just drop it in the All Users startup group and you're good to go.

In its simplest form, you're going to need two parts to make this work. First, you're going to need some sort of network share with at least the contents of the i386 folder available. Remember, the $OEM$ structure will go INSIDE the i386 folder, not parallel to it like on a CD. Second, you're going to need some kind of boot media with the NIC drivers required to get your target box onto the network. With those two pieces the rest is simple. You will just need to execute the proper setup command line options and off you go.

Take a look at either Microsoft's Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) v 2.5 or DiegoStart. Both are free, and while BDD relies on WinPE, DiegoStart uses BartPE. Either way, both have a lot of thought put into installing Windows over the network with many scripts and logic in place to configure and customize the entire installation process including applications. It surprised me how quick it was, but using DiegoStart I was able to install XP over a wireless connection. Regardless of if you use them or not, a great deal of knowledge can be learned from the documentation and the scripts used.

From the official web site: [Chapter 3: Advanced Info] Silent Installation: FlyakiteOSX has the ability to be installed unattended silently. The .zip file that the installer was in should also contain a FlyakiteOSX.ini file. This file is an answer file which tells FlyakiteOSX what options you want installed during a silent installation. The answer file is only used during a silent installation, and silent installation will only work with the answer file present. To use the answer file simply set what options you want installed to either "yes" or "no", place the .ini file in the same directory as the FlyakiteOSX installer, and call the installer with the /S switch (case sensitive). More information about creating unattended installations can be found here.

I don't think that VMWare Player can be used to alter the hardware settings. Normally with VMWare Workstation/GSX/ESX you would alter the hardware settings and redirect the CDROM to your ISO file. Why don't you try VMWare Server? It's free and fully functional just like VMWare Workstation. VMWare and Microsoft are competing heavily in the virtualization market so since Microsoft offered up VirtualServer for free, VMWare stepped up and offered VMWare Server. According to the infor in this thread, the owner of the site is moving and looking to be back up and running any time now. http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jsp...65&tstart=0

PatrickEmpire, As I suggested in your prior thread asking for help you really need to work on your project in steps. You are trying to do everything right away and when it doesn't work you ask for help yet ignore the help you get. You need to realize that creating an unattended setup that is going to do all the things that you are looking to do is going to take quite some time to develop. As I said before, don't jump in with trying to do several application installs until after you have mastered installing just a single app. Yes, it takes more time, but once you have your first app's install working the rest are that much easier. You're jumping all over the place looking for someone to give you some magical answer that's going to make it all work for you. Go back through the tutorials found here: http://unattended.msfn.org it explains everything in nice step by step guides. It's the documentation that everyone here has been referencing for years. Pick a method that you want to use to install your apps with and start with a single application. Once you have that working, then move on to add more applications. Again, follow the documentation here -> http://unattended.msfn.org you have to learn what is going on behind the scenes if you ever hope to be able to troubleshoot the problems you encounter.

I thnk the \" characters in your batch file may be what's causing the problems. I'm only guessing because I don't know exactly what's happening with your installs. Other than that everything looks okay.

You have a couple of problems here. First, you're setting the title key before you've defined what %KEY% is. Next, you're biggest problem is the cleanup and reboot you do in the middle of things: I'm sure you don't want to hear this, but your best bet is to start slow and follow the documentation here: http://unattended.msfn.org. It provides excellent step by step guides to doing everything. I would not jump head-first into using a tool like nLite, especially if you're going to try to have it do everything you want the first time out. Without knowing what goes into an unattended install you have no way of troubleshooting your problems. Personally, I always start with just getting a basic unatteneded install working. Don't do any applications, don't to any patches, don't do anything except automate the installation of Windows. Once you have that working correctly and you're not getting any errors, then move on to the next step. That next step could be anything, but I'd go with application installs. Start with something easy. If you're going to use the RunOnceEx method, start with a simple application. Make sure the process works before you go tossing a bunch of other apps in there. Once you have a grasp on how things are supposed to work, then you can troubleshoot problems when they do come up. If, on the other hand, you would rather just use nLite there's nothing wrong with that. It's a good tool and I myself use it quite often. I would still suggest you take things slow. Get a basic unattended Windows install working, then add a simple application and so on. Take things one step at a time.