Tripredacus

I found a tutorial about adding a custom DHCP option here: http://www.tcpdump.com/kb/virtualization/virtual-desktop/deploying-thin-clients-with-vmware-view-vdi/dhcp-boot-options.html and here. But on my DC I do not see this type of option. BUT: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg412988.aspx If you right-click your protocol (IPv4) I do see this ability!

Ok, so its branded. Now my question is, on the COA on the netbook have MSI or Microstar name on it? It usually would appear below the OS name. See the "new COA" picture here: http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/antipiracy/pages/COA_hologram.aspx Where it just says "original equipment manufacturer" under "Windows 7 Home Premium." XP should be the same, I've got an XP PC here that has Dell name under the OS name.

There is a list but you need to have a Microsoft Partner account to (potentially) get there. Usually, most communications and support for Embedded products go through an Embedded Partner. There are some differences with POSReady 2009 than just XP. As an example, some drivers that work fine in XP won't work on POSReady 2009. And there are differences with the updates. You definately can't just put a POSReady 2009 update onto XP, you typically get that "minimum requirements" error.

Welcome to the MSFN!

Welcome to the MSFN!

From your screenshot, we can see you are trying to sysprep an OS that is not in Audit Mode. This, in itself, is not the recommended way of creating an image. Either way, the error log leads me to believe that a Network Location was selected for the OS at some point. Information about Network Location: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Choosing-a-network-location Here is what the Network Location prompt looks like: http://www.trickday.com/wp-content/plugins/RSSPoster_PRO/cache/6d866_windows-7-set-network-location_1.png Bottom line, you cannot sysprep an OS that has a Network Location set, even if that location isn't actively being used. Any attempt to sysprep an OS with a Network Location set will generate this error. This is commonly referred to either the DRM or Network Location bug, that has gone "unfixed" since the release of Vista. You can see others have experienced this as well:

Well MSI is an OEM as well, so maybe I am confused about what kind of disc you actually have. Does the COA on the netbook say MSI (or Microstar) on it? And the XP Home disc you have, is it a hologram disc? If it is a hologram disc, you shouldn't have any problems but if it is not the standard hologram disc then you might have some extra work to do. Well its obviously no secret that they exist. Its not even really a big deal since that distribution model isn't used anymore.

Interesting... Whatever guide I originally used for WinPE 2.0 said to use it, and I still use it to this day.

Its being worked on.

wpeinit does not start up the NIC. This does: wpeutil initializenetwork

The question then becomes, how to determine if your BIOS is UEFI 2.3.1 compliant? I suspect most current ones are not since this UEFI specification was released in June 2012. UEFI 2.3.1 started showing up early this year, nevermind the publish date on that document. There are a few ways I have found so far. 1. In the BIOS, there is an option to enable UEFI boot 2. The motherboard spec sheet mentions support for "Fast Boot" All Intel boards (look at board rev/AA number) on this list have it: http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-033076.htm Note the exceptions below. Anything newer from Intel have it, such as X79, 77 chipsets, but some of their "embedded" type systems, do not have it such as the D2700MUD. You'd have to look at the ProductSpec PDFs to find this info. Other ones its tough. All the new Compal, Pegatron and ASI notebooks/Ultrabooks have it, as do the A75 MSI AMD boards, but this information is even harder to find. The only reason I know those is because I've gotten in the habit of asking.

There should be a rotating ball type animation below the logo... Here is an example: http://www.techfeb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/windows8-release-preview-booting-screen-for-windows-7.png

I don't think it has PowerShell. iirc, only WinPE 4 (a Windows 8 boot.wim) can add PowerShell3 to it. I doubt adding the PowerShell package in the ADK to a Windows 7 boot.wim is supported but who knows if it would actually work!

You found one of our user's link! Here is that thread if you want to check it out:

Not really. OEM discs are of two "kinds": the "BIG" OEM's like HP, Dell and the like the "small" OEM Clarification. There are three "OEM" type discs. 1. The popularly known one, aka channel media, is DSP (as noted on that site)... This is commonly a hologram disc and comes with a COA that does not have a company's name on it. For example, XP Pro SP2 (X10-59871) can unlock with an X14 COA. Some Technet or MSDN subscribers can download this OS type from their download center. This type also appears on the secondary market, or can be purchased from a VAR (computer shop) with a qualifying piece of hardware. 2. There is the OEM Recovery CD/DVD that has a company's name on it, and restores a BIOS-locked installation. These discs commonly do additional hardware checks, for example a Compaq XP Recovery CD may refuse to install on Dell hardware. Most companies will sell a copy of the recovery CD to a user but only if the user can confirm they have qualifying hardware. These CDs often appear on the secondary market. 3. The last is the CD that Microsoft sends to the OEM/System Builder to create both the OS and the recovery CD. These discs are white and are stamped with "Confidential." Users with appropriate Microsoft Partner accounts may have access to download this type of media from Microsoft. I have not seen this media type in the secondary market, likely because its resale (like Intel Confidential hardware) is illegal. #3 here is what allen2 is referring to.

Turisas - The Great Escape For some reason this song gives me chills.

You need to automate your installation. You can use batch, AutoIT or some other method to prompt for the key and store it into a variable. Then after the key is input, you can execute your cmd as (example only) kis13.0.0.3370.exe /s /p"ACTIVATIONCODE=" & $var & "

I guess it does... I mean, they did not tell me how to use it. It appears to be some sort of calibration program for "something" I presume we do not have. So yes!

So you need to (beside start using code tags and get rid of that extra space) is to find where the image is kept. You can do it with WMI, but many people cheap out and just search all drive letters for a matching path. Example: cmd /c 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:\wpi\wpi.exe start %i:\wpi\wpi.exe source: But I do not know if you can read from WMI directly with a .cmd in WinPE (does wmic work?) without using a scripting or programming language.

I can say that this allows writing the WIN98 type bootsector. Rebooting and the DOS "image" comes up as normal. So this will work using Mbrfix presuming the original image was created using one of the 3 boot sector types it supports. So if it were actually using a Win95 or other version of DOS, some other method would be required to deploy it properly. For the sake of documentation, here is the current .cmd file: regedit /s z:\diskpart.reg diskpart /s z:\fat32.txt imagex /apply z:\dos.wim 1 c: diskpart /s z:\offline.txt z:\mbrfix64 /drive 0 /partition 1 fixbootsector WIN98 /yes exit offline.txt is: sel disk 0 offline disk exit

The idea that the UI is back to being HTML based seems to be a security hole waiting to happen. Wasn't that the reason why Active Desktop was ditched?

Warez discussion is not allowed on this forum. All official downloads from Microsoft are not available in a direct link, and are behind logon portals.

Well I do hope you contribute more than posting a link to a PS3 mod...

Allow me to doubt about this. Sure that's fine. I know it works because I had *tried* something just for fun... I had used Mbrfix to backup the MBR of the Seagate drive and applied it to the Toshiba drive... which obviously did not fix the booting issue.. BUT the BIOS detected the Toshiba drive as a 500GB Seagate. I'll take a look at your links on Thursday (vacation day) Thanks for the help so far.