Tripredacus

Definately use WinPE 3.0. Make sure that your clients meet the minimum requirements for deployment WinPE 3.0 x86: 512MB RAM WinPE 3.0 x64: 1GB RAM* * actual value is likely somewhere around 600-700MB RAM however haven't been able to test this as all systems I work on use 512MB sticks or greater.

You can pull the currently logged in account from WMI, in the Win32_ComputerSystem you can get the UserName object. You'll need to do an LTrim on it because it will return COMPUTERNAME\USERNAME as part of the data.

Honestly, it is a bad practice to run vbs from a network share. Yes you can make some changes to the Local Security Policy to allow those types of things to run, but I would research into other ways to do these deployments, as opening up those settings can be a big security risk for your network.

Take a look at this example: Sub Append Dim Answer Answer = MsgBox("Do you want to calculate?",1,"calculate") If Answer = 1 Then objshell.run("calc.exe"),0 Else Exit Sub End If End Sub So you need to determine what all the return values are and put them in the else if you want something "else" to happen if you click Cancel.

Not all motherboards will allow you to do a RAID after the fact. Intel boards for sure. Say you wanted to do a RAID1 and you wanted to use an existing drive and build a RAID with it. Intel Matrix or RST can't do it, but their enterprise cards can. Not sure about other boards. Here are the best recommendations I can make about the different RAID levels: RAID1 - two drives (obviously) RAID5 - 3 drives + hot spare RAID10 - 8 drives Of course there are other ways to do RAID5 and 10, but those are the arrangements I am most comfortable with in knowing that my data is safe. Others may have different opinions tho. Always make sure to install the RAID software so you can see when the array breaks. Also make sure you label the SATA cables as to what ports you are connecting to, and also label the drives/enclosures. You want to be EXTREMELY sure of which drives you are swapping out for when a drive fails. If using a 5 or 10, use enclosures, but it doesn't necessarily need to be a hot swap. And lastly ONLY USE RAID EDITION DRIVES! Here is an example of a setup I am currently working on that has a RAID1 for OS, and RAID5 + HS for data:

You should be able to do a board swap without doing a full reinstall of Windows 7. My PC at home went from an 865GBF to a Q35JO without reinstalling. You may need to reactivate Windows tho. Make sure you aren't going from IDE mode to AHCI tho.

Hmm I have not tried incorporating Flash (SWF) files into the PE before, but it may be interesting to you that Flash Projector projects work fine in PE without adding anything into it. So if you can get away with running a Projector that might be the way to go. I had once made a recovery partition that loaded a Projector app to do all the work.

Even so, I barely noticed the "cousin" part, but the "Corporate Edition" part. Since most people will call the VLK or MAK version of Windows as the "Corporate Edition" when it is a warez release, because for some reason no one ever calls it the VLK edition like it really is. Just something weird I've learned over the years.

There could be any number of reasons. First thing you may try if you are using a batch file (you should use .cmd not .bat) is to run it with a wrapper, such as: statup.cmd > c:\users\public\statup.log To see where there may be a failure. Also you can try look in Event Viewer to see if something shows up there. I use EXE for all my deployment scripts because sometimes a .cmd will not run at the correct level I would want it to. Also with EXE it is easier to do a runas if needed but you might be able to do with .cmd.

I am not certain where the issue is, maybe you mistyped something? Anyways, here is an example of how I handle multiple OS versions. As we know, the startup folder is a different path between Windows 7 and XP. In my deployment program, I have a single EXE that goes into the appropriate startup folder. When the OS boots for the first time, the program detects the installed OS and sets variables or runs commands as are appropriate for that OS. This is (at least) important for when you need to have the app delete itself so that it doesn't run on the next reboot.

Is Windows sharing options not working for you? You can do this by removing the "Everyone" or "All Users" access to the share and assigning user accounts to the share instead. Create the users in the host computer's Users section, then assign the share and NTFS permissions to the folder. EDIT: Oh what OS versions are on your computers? This may be important.

Well you will need to know how to manually kick off either of those two options. Choose your own progamming method, batch or something more advanced. Then in your WinPE, use the winpeshl.ini (or startnet.cmd but not both) to launch wpeinit, then your program.

Sure. There is a bat file already that starts WinPE, it is startnet.cmd. Make sure your winpeshl.ini is blank or it will ignore the startnet.cmd. Here is one of my old startnet.cmd files: wpeinit wpeutil initializenetwork ping 127.0.0.1 -n 16 -w 1000>null net use z: \\7SERVER\images ZarleyZalapski33 /user:kdineen regsvr32 /s misc/gimagex_com.dll mshta.exe x:\windows\system32\imagex.hta So you probably just need wpeinit as the first option, then your other two commands right afterwards. This file is located in x:\windows\system32

It is definately possible. As long as the HAL and Mass Storage driver are the same (or compatible) you can replace a board and not have to reinstall XP. I've even had such luck with Windows 98.

I tried to make this file size as small as possible, but PB had actually shrunk the image size down. Originally it was 3840x1024... I hack-jobbed this background myself and set it to repeat

Honestly, I've only used WSIM once... to create my first answer file. All the others I've made were done in Scite or Notepad, using that one I created as reference. If you are cool with not having something check for errors for you, then feel free to try it that way.

Indeed Vinifera... I see you are using WindowBlinds yes? If you remove the selection color (effectively making it a null value) how can you know if something is selected? Doing something like this could cause some errors to occur.

The other thing I thought of would be to have your wallpapers in all the resolutions you need, then run a script to determine what the resolution is and use the appropriate wallpaper. I seem to remember the loss of the wallpaper alignment options from back then, but I got used to it.

I'm fairly certain that the setting in Autounattend will choose the network location for the network connected at the time of install/sysprep. That being said, it should prompt you if you connect to a different network afterwards. Or, say, if you do your install without being connected to a network, then at some point later you do connect it to an internet.

Is this a wallpaper that is to be used on multiple resolutions? You can just create a larger image with a single color, and then paste the wallpaper at 0,0 and save a new image.

It may be possible that a reinstall won't really solve your problem. Most notebooks that came out with Vista's release were underpowered for the OS they came with. Notebook manufacturers were previously running XP on fairly low-powered systems and were force to switch to Vista, thus barely meeting the system requirements. So let me ask a couple of questions first. 1. How much RAM is in the notebook? 2. What is the make and model? Notebook manufacturers had stopped providing the recovery media (due to the cost) and provided a recovery partition instead. There should also be an option within the OS to burn the recovery DVD.

Can't you use the Shift trick at disc insertion in that case? Of course learning to do it properly without triggering filter keys is another story.

What version of Half-Life did you install? I know the original version, like the GoTY 4 pack and earlier versions did not work properly in XP. Is yours this version or older, or is it a more recent one or from Steam?

I think, how that works, is google will have already cached a page to know what words are on it, then it will display what it thinks is "appropriately related content" for the page you are on. I can see how Google can "get it wrong" quite easily!