Tripredacus

Except Taskkill, that one was typed wrong.

The Windows 8.1 Update will back some files up during the upgrade process. It creates a Windows.old and will backup (at least) these folders: - Perflogs - Program Files - Program Files (x86) * - Users - Windows * if using a 64bit OS So if you are using a small SSD, or are low on disk space, verify that you have enough free space for Windows to back up these folders or else the upgrade may fail with an error. I do not believe that the update verifies enough free space is available for the backup prior to making that backup and attempting to perform the upgrade.

I doubt Media Center has anything to do with it. The error you posted specifically refers to a driver. The specific driver should be mentioned in the error screen, or may be in Event Viewer after the 8.1 Update rolls back.

Travel and cooking. Two things I rarely bother with.

Live Wire: a "terrorist" buys a secret formula that makes water explode when mixed with acid. I put terrorist in quotes because that's what the description on the box says. There may be some backstory or cut scenes that were not in the film to show what his true motivations were. The entire film shows that he is owed money from shady government types and when they don't pay, he sends some guys out to assassinate those guys. There was a perfect opportunity for the guy to get his money at the end of the movie, but the writers didn't take advantage of that part, and instead decided the guy would kill himself instead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Wire_%28film%29

After reading some of the early 8.1 (Australian) Adopters on TechNet yesterday, I decided to see how well my Windows 8 image updates. For example, some users complained of not being able to run recovery anymore, or 8.1 creating additional partitions. Well it took approximately 18 hours to download the 3.6GB update... Its supposedly installing now.

Emphasis mine. Of course as time goes on, Windows is changed to protect people from themselves because Microsoft has no care to properly educate people. We had a discussion about this before, about why the UAC exists. No, I'd say that Windows 2000 would be the last "real" Windows. One could argue that XP would be so instead, but the building blocks were already in place when it would complain about not having anti-virus installed.

Why after setup? Can't you do it using the answer file?

There was no solution from Microsoft, other than to enable Boot to Desktop. http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2013/07/24/step-by-step-boot-directly-to-the-desktop-in-windows-8-1.aspx

Fist of Legend. Apparently I had seen the ending before and never knew the name of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fist_of_Legend

I pretty much wrote off that D-Link news when I read it on twitter over the weekend. For a couple of reasons: 1. D-Link routers are bargain basement products. You get what you pay for. 2. D-Link routers work like crap with base firmware. Anyone who has a brain and buys one of these would put DD-WRT on it. 3. The default setting for the admin page being public is DISABLED. So there ya go.

Good point. My Windows is not activated either. I'll try changing the RGB BGR again tomorrow.

I have no updates added. I am not using any leaked software. My software comes directly from Microsoft. The only reason I resorted to changing the Start Screen color is for software deployments. When it is red it means software is installed. When it is green it means it is done. Originally I had used a MessageBox to appear when it was done, but this "broke" the Start Screen. I will see if I can get some other feedback on how to change the colors.

After my application finishes, the Start Screen is still red. Even though you can see in this screenshot that the code for green is written: So I open the tuner, it shows the Accent color is red: I choose to change it to green. But the tuner shows it as Blue now: Here is the registry now: The start screen is also now blue: So I sysprep the PC and after going through OOBE, the Start Screen is default blue which I did not change from the color screen. Even after logging into Windows, still the Tuner does not function! Changing to any color on the color select screen, the Accent Color remains unchanged, still stays blue. Changing the Logon Screen color changes the color of the box at least, but when I apply the settings, it changes back to the blue color.

To further clarify, a disk can either be MBR or GPT. Its kinda like how your car can either be manual or automatic.

Also, I can confirm that the registry keys are being written to. I can see the change in regedit. I will reload the PC and take screenshots of everything, then sysprep and see if the app works then. I don't specifically need the screen to turn green, turning blue would work for me too.

I added the screenshot from Depends as well. Ignoring IESHIMS, the other ones with the hyphens imply something else is missing. In my previous experience when running depends and finding these hyphen items, a program was missing a redist. It is also possible that something needs to be registered, something not normally active in Audit Mode. SSCTpml.rar

Did you try it in Audit Mode? When I open the program, it shows the accent color as being red. When I click it and pick green from the menu, the square then becomes blue. I confirm this is the color of the Start Screen. I captured a PML of it if you want. Also I ran depends on the 3 files and only the WinaeroStartScreenHelper.dll shows something is missing. This OS has no updates installed and no extra .NET versions enabled or installed.

Windows 8.1 Pro x64 RTM

Using that tool doesn't seem to work. Not even changing the colors in the app. I can select the new color from the list but the little boxes remain the same. I do see that it writes *something* to the registry, but I cannot determine what those hex values relate to. They are not standard hex color codes. I rebooted as well but it didn't change anything.

Something changed in Windows 8.1. For Win8 I use this AutoIT script at the start: RegWrite ( "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" , "ColorSet_Version3" , "REG_DWORD" , "0x0000000e" ) RunWait (@ComSpec & " /c taskkill.exe /f /im explorer.exe") Run(@ComSpec & " /c Start c:\windows\explorer.exe") $metro = "1"This changes the metro screen to red (from the default). And it works in Windows 8.1. However after the work is done, this part does NOT change it to green (or anything). But later if I change the reg key to 0x0000000b, and restart, the color still stays as red. I've tried other hex codes and they do not make any difference. Even if I manually change the registry key, and either kill and re-open explorer or restart the computer. I should also note, that in Audit Mode, you can't launch explorer.exe nor cmd.exe from Task Manager unless you check the "create this task with administrative priveledges" box.

I wonder if it is all possible to run a boot trace on this frankenOS you have made for yourself. http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158252-trace-why-windows-8-boots-shutsdown-or-hibernates-slowly/

First of all, you should have .cmd and not .bat. Second, there is no GUI in the Specialize pass, so your .cmd file shouldn't echo anything at all. You'll need to check the setupact.log to determine what the actual error is.

The SkipRearm setting does not exist for Windows 8. You will need to find the error in the setup logs on the client. You can access these in c:\windows\panther. However, if setuperr.log is empty, it may be located in the setup or UnattendGC folders.

I'm fairly certain that Vista will automatically defrag the disk by default.