Tripredacus

Well technically, the discs themselves should be very cheap unless somehow they are collector's items. The major part of the price for an OS is the license. If you can find just the media with no key (presuming its the correct media for you) then it *should* be cheaper, but then again maybe not!

Yes, there is a topic in the Win9x section too:

Sure you can use an unattend that leaves out the computer name. Then when the system boots from OOBE you will get a computer name prompt and nothing else. As far as the password, if you are specifying it in your answer file, then just let WSIM encrypt it. The only reason you don't want a plain text password is because the XML will remain on the system after deployment. Devious employees might go and look for it and be able to get the password out. Do you really want your employees to have access to an account with admin priveledges? That's the only real reason. But if you want to run the risk, its totally up to you.

Here is a screenshot I took showing the folder alias problem: I resolved this by reinstalling Windows. I created C:\Backup\Data. Then use Imagex to apply into the Data folder. Take ownership, remove read-only flag and set Full Control to the local account. It was a pain, but still no idea why it used a folder alias the first time.

I am going to have to test this out. I'm currently working on a 2008 SSE image and the logon count is 10. I'll reboot it a bunch of times to see if it eventually prompts for credentials.

You are getting this problem because when you press F11, it sets the recovery partition as being active and you can boot into it. But then you have nothing to set the OS volume to be active when you exit the recovery partition. This is why you are getting the bootmgr error. For some strange reason, you can actually hide an OS volume, using either MBR, diskpart or other tools, and you can STILL actually start booting into the OS! I'm not sure why this happens. Theoretically, if the volume is hidden you should get a PXE prompt or the standard "no bootable device found" type message. Instead, the bootloaders on both XP and Vista (didn't try 7, no reason to) will actually start, but then realize their drive type is incompatible and toss you a message. Sometimes it is just this bootmgr message, but I have seen XPe actually pop a BSOD when its volume wasn't set to the proper ID. So when I made my own recovery partition using Terrabyte's MBR program, I had to make sure that the OS volume would get set as active after booting into the recovery partition, so that on a reboot you wouldn't get these types of errors.

I don't think there is a limit to the logons. When I set a user account to use AutoLogon, the OS logs in with that account. Even after you reboot or even days later. I think it just saves that setting. Indeed it is likely the same as AutoAdminLogon in XP. But remember that terminology in XP is from the registry. I do not have any experience in making unattend files for XP, so I do not know if AutoLogon is a carry over from that or not. I've never used the controlpasswords2 option to set an autologon with XP, only through the registry.

Are you using XP Home like your account says? This is a message you normally see with Vista and 7 for programs written for XP or earlier OSes.

OK here's the deal. I now have a notebook that has Windows 7 Pro on it and 2 Users folder in C:. The thing is that there is actually the regular Users folder, and the other one is called Data. This is confirmed by viewing the contents of C with the command prompt. However, viewing the folder from Explorer shows it to be Users. Let me tell you how I got to this point. This notebook was shut off during updates and the OS got smoked. Not even a reinstall over top would work, and I was only able to reinstall by formatting the drive. Prior to this format, I had used imagex to capture C:\Users as: imagex /capture d:\users z:\backups\backup.wim "C Users Backup" Then I reloaded the system and created a folder in C called Data. I then used imagex to restore the backup into this folder as: imagex /apply z:\backups\backup.wim 1 d:\data What ended up happening was that the Data folder had still existed in the OS, and was called Data in CMD. But Windows Explorer showed it to be Users. I can rename the folder using CMD and it shows an updated name. If I try to rename using Explorer, it also works (verified in CMD) but the name still says Users. I cannot write anything into this folder as I get a permissions error. This happens even if I use an elevated Notepad for example. I was able to take ownership of the folder, but not able to give the Everyone group Full Control permissions. Obviously, Windows is protecting this "false" Users folder with the same things it uses to protect the "real" Users folder, but this is just boggling my mind. So right now, I made another folder called Backup and copying the files I need out the false Users folder into there. Then I will boot into WinPE and delete the Data folder. Then hopefully this will be solved. Anyways, a real mystery going on!

I do not use the exact same process as you but, as Cluberti said, you are going to need to make an unattend file. So we can start at step 3. Before you do your sysprep, you need to make an XML file with WSIM. This program is included in the WAIK (Windows Automated Install Kit) for Windows 7. Technically you could use a Vista unattend file, but some of the settings do not work in Windows 7. You can get the WAIK here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=696dd665-9f76-4177-a811-39c26d3b3b34&displaylang=en You install this on your Technician PC, aka some computer that you do your dev work on. The Technician PC is not the one you are making the images on! You open up WSIM, and the first thing it wants to do is find a catalog file. You will need to insert your source Windows 7 DVD and choose the appropriate CLG from the Sources folder. After this, you choose to create a new Unattend file. Some examples of unattend files are here: Since you will be applying your XML from the OS (as opposed to during install) you do not need all everything. The only ones you should probably worry about is what is in the Specialize and oobeSystem passes. Since you are new to making this file, you may want to approach your image creation the way I set up my systems for testing. Here is what I do: 1. I install Win7 with an unattend file from the DVD to put the OS into Audit Mode. 2. Then I install any drivers or programs I want to use. >>> it is at this point that I want to preserve an image for testing so that I do not have to redo all this work. 3. Run sysprep /generalize /audit /shutdown 4. Capture the image to the server, call it w7audit.wim. 5. Boot the machine up again. Copy my XML file I made for sysprep and put it in c:\windows\system32\sysprep. 6. Run sysprep.exe /oobe /restart /unattend:c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.xml Now at step 6 I can test to verify that my unattend/sysprep.xml file works properly. If it does not work, I simply redeploy the audit image I captured, make some changes to the xml and try again. So let's say that my XML is working the way I want it to, I need to capture the master image: 7. Run sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown /unattend:c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.xml 8. Capture the image to the server, call it install.wim or w7oobe.wim 9. Redeploy the oobe image to machines.

You definately cannot post any files from inside the recovery partition. Is this a Vista or Windows 7 recovery partition? The programs I used from Terrabyte Unlimited can boot both a WinPE from Vista or 7, but I have had problems. For example, If I use a Win7 WinRE on a Vista system, it will not work properly. And FWIW, in my original image testing of imaging a SoftThinks partition with Imagex, I was also not able to get it to boot to the recovery partition, even though it was set up properly. I could never get the F11 key to work either. But yes, you need the MBR information to do it, which is why I still only use Ghost to image systems with the SoftThinks recovery partition.

WinPE 3.0 = Windows 7 WinPE 2.x = Vista

Well technically, I could have it search for the OS drive which should always be 40GB. I just won't really be able to make it so an end-user can't change something to make recovery not work, but currently everything is just hard-coded.

I can't help you in driver development, but if you create a driver using the Windows 7 or Vista driver model that should be enough. As far as driver injection goes, you can find that in IcemanND's updated guide:

IN the future, attach a modified XML to your post. Modify it by taking out the product key. If you ran the validator in WSIM, you would have seen the following: 1. The 'WillShowUI' element is invalid - The value 'onerror' is invalid according to its datatype 'WillShowUIType' - The Enumeration constraint failed. 2. Setting SkipMachineOOBE is deprecated in the Windows image.

I know 1 and 3 can be done via an unattend file, either during first install or from sysprep. Both in oobeSystem pass and Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup component: 1. NetworkLocation (OOBE) 2. AutoLogon

In the recovery console, I believe you should be able to run diskpart. Try it out, like this: DISKPART LIST VOL EXIT that will show you the drive letter. Find the one that is your hard drive, let's say it shows up as C: Then use this CHKDSK C: /F It may give you an error but you can press Y to get past it and it will run.

It looks like this is controlled in here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

Welcome to the MSFN! Please read our forum rules, especially #12. Try moving or deleting from an elevated command prompt and post the output.

So do you want to change the password for the built-in Administrator account or the one you created that is in the local Administrators group?

It looks like you can modify the registry keys to tell it not to scan. Look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382546%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

The thing about boos is you don't know whether to hug them or be scared. But just don't run away!

"It says choo choo choo choose me, and there's a picture of a train!" - Ralph Wiggum Oh wait, what kind of engineer?

Jaclaz I find it funny you tell people to search then post a bunch of boot land links. Anyways, moving this to Install Windows from USB.

Both Mini XP and Hiren's Boot CD contains warez. If you are in-fact asking about how to create a Windows XP for Thin Clients, that is another story. I suppose it is possible with WinPE (I think BS Explorer is like this) but likely a better option is XP Embedded. If you are asking about Mini XP or Hiren's Boot CD, then that is another story.