zbeniamin

mritter, Sonic, thank you for your posts. However, I don't think I was able to state my problem correctly. My main problem was that i can't have WINDOWS open the HTA file. It has nothing to do with the starting command. I agree that /w means wait for the process to finish. But my problem is that my Windows XP does not open HTA files no matter what the command is. Not even double click in Windows Explorer. Anyway, I called a friend of mine, he's a computer guy, and he doesn't know how to do that either... so i guess i'm going to give up on using WPI. Maybe some other method will do. Thanks guys for your help.

I haven't got KB912945. I use SVCPACK method to include hotfixes. I am not having problems with the code starting the wpi.hta, I'm having a problem with Windows Xp PRO SP2 which does not open any HTA file. It's just like having a non existant extension that windows doesn't know of. In the BATCH file i included (runhta.cmd), at the "start mshta wpi.hta" point, it can just be "wpi.hta" plain and simple and it gets open on a normal system. I don't know what else to do. I tried everyting i found on these forums, Xp pro advices forums, google searches and all... It's definately something I did, because if I just setup windows XP from the same CD without using any unattended answer file, the HTA file association is just fine.

There's no limit to the software entries in WPi, as far as i know (maybe 999999? ). Did you get a chance to look at the config examples that ship with the 4.3.8 version? They have way more than 35. Did you ever try starting the WPI from hard drive? Just double click the WPI.HTA file, skip the CMD script. If it loads up, and there's more than just a blank screen, this must mean that the DVD your burned is not being read properly by your DVD drive. Oh, and you might want to try your WPI from the DVD ISO before you actually burn it. Take the ISO and load it up in an emulator like Nero ImageDrive, or Daemon tools, or Alcohol 120% or any other CD/DVD emulator software out there.

I have included the batch file which starts WPI in my WINNT.SIF at the [GuiRunOnce]. Now, the weird thing is this: the mshta.exe process is running but the HTA isn't showing up. If I go to the wpi folder, where wpi.hta resides using Windows Explorer, the file has no association (the icon of the file is the "unknown" type of icon). Actually, if you double click the wpi.hta file, the OPEN WITH dialog shows up. Now, how do I get my Windows XP to open the HTA file without any user intervention? (maybe like a REG patch or something?) I exported everything related to ".reg" (did a search) from my current installation -which is able to open HTA files- using REGEDIT, and I merged them all in the New installation and it still couldn't OPEN the HTA file, although it now recognized the HTA file as "HTML Application". So now I'm stuck with an installation of Windows XP PRO SP2 (some windows update patches slipstreamed) which knows what the ".hta" extension stands for, but it's unable to open it, unless I, the user, browse to "%WINDIR%\system32" in the OPEN WITH dialog, and select the "mshta.exe" as the program to open the file with. That's not an unattended installation, for sure... New XP installation specs: Windows XP Professional slipstreamed with SP2, SVCPACKed with the folowing: [SetupData] CatalogSubDir="\i386\SVCPACK" [ProductCatalogsToInstall] KB911565.CAT KB911564.CAT KB873339.CAT KB885250.CAT KB885626.CAT KB885835.CAT KB885836.CAT KB886185.CAT KB888113.CAT KB888302.CAT KB890046.CAT KB890859.CAT KB891781.CAT KB893756.CAT KB894391.CAT KB896358.CAT KB896422.CAT KB896423.CAT KB896424.CAT KB896428.CAT KB899587.CAT KB899589.CAT KB899591.CAT KB900725.CAT KB901017.CAT KB901214.CAT KB902400.CAT KB904706.CAT KB905414.CAT KB905749.CAT KB905915.CAT KB908519.CAT KB910437.CAT KB911927.CAT KB912919.CAT KB913446.CAT Has anyone experienced this before?

I had this annoying thing also... but at that time i didn't find any solution, so i dropped it. Anyhow, after some time, i saw something interesting that Partition Magic (powerquest was the name, but now >symantec< has taken over) can do: change drive letters under XP successfully. You might want to try that.

I just realized that my post is somehow out of topic. It might fit better in the User contributed forums, the WPI. But anyhow, this is more of a file association problem. I am sure this is just a simple thing, but forgive me, I just cannot see it! So, here we go: Unattended setup of Windows XP PRO (slipstreamed with SP2), goes all the way through the [GuiRunOnce], runs the script "runhta.cmd" but the wpi.HTA file does not pop up, even though the MSHTA process is running. So i figured maybe i can use REGEDIT to get the file association done, but it's not working! I've lost my calm so maybe that's why i don't see the problem. runhta.cmd: set DATA="HTML Application" REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\htafile /v "" /t REG_SZ /d %DATA% /f set DATA="%WINDIR%\system32\mshta.exe,1" REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\htafile\DefaultIcon /v "" /t REG_SZ /d %DATA% /f set DATA="%WINDIR%\system32\mshta.exe %%1 %%*" REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\htafile\Shell\Open\Command /v "" /t REG_SZ /d %DATA% /f set DATA= REM Looking for the installation drive letter... for %%i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do if exist %%i:\here.yes set wpipath="%%i:\wpi\" echo The path has been set as %wpipath% echo. echo Running the wpi.hta... REM Special registry tweak needed. regedit /s %wpipath%common\wpi.reg REM Make WPI directory the current directory. cd /d "%wpipath%" echo. start mshta wpi.hta echo. REM Undo registry tweak. regedit /s %wpipath%common\undo.reg REM Cleaning up the desktop. rem del /s/q "%userprofile%\desktop\*.lnk" REM Rebooting the sytem to finalize the installation process. REM shutdown.exe -r -f -t 30 -c "To finish installations WPI will now reboot in 30 sec..." exit I thought maybe i disabled something in the [Components] section of WINNT.SIF, but i don't see anything; do you? winnt.sif: [Components] AccessOpt = Off Chat = Off Dialer = Off Hearts = Off Indexsrv_system = Off Media_utopia = Off Mousepoint = Off Msnexplr = Off Pinball = Off Solitaire = Off Templates = Off Zonegames = Off