Tripredacus

So we got a new drive image in today. It is Windows XP SP2 with IE7. The installed apps are some games, DirectX and Trend Micro client. I had to approve the usage of the image and run a sid change on it. There were no scheduled tasks so that was good. So I ran the sid change, rebooted and checked out the event viewer. All clear, no problems so I approved it and we started dropping the image on a few PCs. Well this is where things got weird. We run the sid changer on the new PCs and it does something different. And it does this on all (we did 6) of them. After the desktop loads up after the reboot (any reboot/logoff) the wallpaper (bliss) is visible, but maybe 5 seconds after that, the wallpaper disappears and we have a gray background. OK i thought the wallpaper just became broken, so I open up the display properties, and I realise that everything EXCEPT "Color" is unavailable (grayed out) on the Desktop tab. You can click everything else on the other tabs. I had another guy look at one of the machines and we tried all sorts of stuff. He discovered that the wallpaper actually doesn't get changed, because you can see it if you reboot, or if you kill the explorer.exe process. I even set the IE home page to an htm file, then enabled Active Desktop. What happened was that this gray "background" sits between the wallpaper and the Active Desktop layer. We also tried the following: - reinstall the video card drivers - run a repair install - boot into Safe Mode - disable all startup apps with msconfig and set all Trend services to manual - run the System File Checker, which didn't fix it either but it made Windows BSOD instead. - add filemon to Run in the registry to capture events at bootup, which ironically led me to find Trend isn't working properly but I'm not concerned with that. - verified there are no active GPOs applied via GPRESULT and the GPOE. - verify desktop/shell registry settings - checked all suspect log and INI files searching for security apps. - killed 95% of handles and processes with Process Explorer. OK so if the eval PC did this, i would think it is fine. But it didn't. In fact, we dug out that drive and booted it up to use as reference. I worked on this for maybe 3 hours today, and the other guy worked on it for about an hour. We are just drawing up blanks. Anyone have an idea about this behaviour?

OK I will once we get another PC in... I shipped the last one.

Hmm that is indeed annoying. Is it too much to remove them all and just add back the ones you want?

This seems to be backwards. The actual setup.exe on the install disc doesn't use the WAIK. The WAIK is just one method of doing the same thing. The install DVD would likely use other libraries when it installs. In other words, Microsoft didn't make their install DVDs with the WAIK, they used the WAIK to mimic their install DVDs.

Honestly - a large portion of that is user error. I've been running all of my Windows machines (ranging from XP Home to Vista Business, and just about everything inbetween) without additional security software for close to two years now. The reason why you can give a "n00b" a mac and not have to deal with malware is because nobody targets them... although that's starting to change. Computer security ultimately comes down to the user. Most modern operating systems are "secure enough" by default, and as long as the system is kept up to date with the operating system patches (forget about AV definitions), most users should be fine. I agree with Zxian. I haven't run additional security (unless you count hardware firewalls) with Windows since... um... 1996 when I used a McAfee AV floppy on a Windows FW 3.11 server... Only have gotten 2 viruses since then, and in both cases (different computers) they were there because I put them there in order for me to learn how to remove them.

Have you looked into using an HTA? Technically there is no desktop in the PE, since its default shell is the command prompt. You see wallpaper of course, but the explorer doesn't run. Is yours set up to use explorer as the shell?

after you mount your image, try peimg /list to see a list of installed packages. The name your package has might differ than what you are typing in.

All ip traffic appears to be normal. traces are basically pointless because there is only 1 hop to be had. These segments do not have access to the internet. I ran a 1k ping to the file server and average time was 1ms, mean time was 2.5ms (actual range 1-4). While running this ping (using ping ip -t -l 1000) I had an XP machine ping the file server, which got <1ms, as well as ping the Vista which was also <1ms. I am not sure what else I can run on it... I mentioned this behaviour to our network admin and he's drawing up a blank on it as well. I have tried connecting using the \\IP instead of \\UNC and the same thing. I try pinging while waiting for the share to open, and all 1ms. Now I get the same stastictics on the other segment but the actual visual response time is faster. The transfer speeds (as reflected by the info box) always shows a <1MBps speed on the slow segment, and a ~10MBps+ on the fast segment. ping times during these obvious slow times are normal. Also, when I traverse folders, as an example. I open a folder on the share. It waits about 20 seconds, then opens the folder but all the icons are generic. There is a little green progress bar that moves slowly through the address bar. It takes maybe 60 seconds for it to make the entire address bar green. It then changes the icons to whatever they are supposed to be. Also during this time, on the explorer bar (folders) it will show the folder, but still collapsed, and have a magnifying glass on it that moves slowly. When it finally loads, it expands the folder as well. I am not sure if I have seen this properly, but on the slow segment, it always shows the "offline status" in the info bar on the bottom. I have not noticed this showing that info on the fast segment. All vista is doing this, but we use a single image, which is modified with Group Policy.

In disk management, what file system and disk type does it have for the volume?

A friend of mine once got three OSes running on a Mac at one time (without using virtual pc) but I haven't a clue how he did it. He only had photos of it where it had 3 monitors connected showing 3 different desktops.

I'm reopening this discussion because of my own experiences. I am getting mixed results with this result. For versions that allow it, I disable these mapper and i/o drivers with group policy. In other versions I disable it using the registry. Say for example, in Home Premium (which has no GP support) the discovery mapper is the only service that is enabled, and the i/o driver is disabled, while both services are set for manual AND enabled on the NIC itself. However, our current LAN is set up in two segments or IP ranges. All vista machines on one range work properly once my settings are applied. But all machines on the other range do not! They operate as if the i/o and mapper are enabled, even if I were to manually unselect them. I can also confirm that the policy is active and have forced a gpupdate. Now these machines are communicating with a 2003 Std server, and say the next station to the vista on this "slow" range has XP. the XP has no problem accessing network resources. As an example, a Vista business PC has taken over an hour to install Realtek Sound drivers off the network, and the XP machine next to it took 3 minutes. And a Business PC on the other range takes 3 minutes. Since it would appear that perhaps there is a cfg problem with one of our segments, what could possibly cause Vista PCs to be slow on it and XP to be not? I can also verify that if I take the "slow" Vista PC off the "slow" segment and connect it to the other one, network shares open very fast and network speed is normal.

I'm actually encountering problems with the silent install. It works fine from a USB key, (actually faster than) hard-disk install but does not work from the network. I recently updated my installer for v8.3.2.2, which was basically use the same batch file with different files. I verified all paths were still correct also. But when I run from a network, I first get an error saying it can't find data\directx\directx.exe even tho I can manually go to it. Should I be using full paths for the network install you think? Right now we are left with copying to the desktop to run it until I update the images.

Sorry I spaced when I replied. I was referring to XP and forgot this was in the Vista forum.

I couldn't think of why you'd want a server to hibernate...

OK I am guessing the DRM is applied to songs bought from the iStore and MP3s that you make with iTunes then. I never used iTunes for any of those purposes, just as a method of getting playlists xferred to an iPod, that is before I downloaded the plugin for Winamp.

While you CAN abort a shutdown this way, Windows will have already started stopping services by the time you see this message. I do not recommend aborting an AUTHORITY shutdown because Windows will become unstable. It is a problem I encountered when battling the Blaster worm when it first showed up. I had the idea that I could abort the shutdown and then run the cleaner, but it wouldn't work because some services were already stopped before I could get into the cmd and type the words. So my solution was to not have the network connected, which of course meant that Blaster wouldn't trigger.

That is interesting because my autoit app can install the font but it won't work with the 3d text screensaver until the computer is rebooted.

I skipped on the power settings for Home Premium and will also for Home Basic. I did finally find the registry entry for the networking option and that seems to have solved that as well.

I keep hearing these complaints of itunes encrypting music but I have the latest version and it never did anything of the sort. I can't figure that out.

Ow common, you must be kidding me. Never got it smoking here... Well I got a Jaz 2GB Fast SCSI-2 drive on a Ultra SCSI-3 to start smoking... I think some controllers let you control the speed with jumpers or dip-switches.

Yes, It does indeed seem like a better way, but I like having the command prompt there. If you put your custom app in the startnet.cmd, it will open on top of the command prompt. So if your app is full-screen you won't see the CMD anyways. But you can still get to it if you alt+tab there.

As a workaround, I've started to look toward the registry to make those settings be remembered in the Home Premium image. I downloaded the VistaGPSettings.xls from microsoft, but none of the keys are present for the things I want to change. For example, to disable "Turn off the hard disk (plugged in)" the spreadsheet says this setting is stored in HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Power\..... except there IS no Power folder under Microsoft... So I am again stumped on getting these settings to work with VHP.

Please ignore this thread. I was not recognizing how the GPOs were working. They are in fact working and they are not destroyed or reset during the sysprep process. My problem now is that there is no Group Policy Object Editor snap-in for MMC in Vista Home Premium...

I looked into this option when trying to write a program that installs a custom desktop settings and screensaver. The screensaver was 3d text, and I installed a font from a network share. Yes indeed the problem is that you ultimately need to reload explorer so it recognizes the new font. Otherwise it just show up as your system default (ie Arial) font until you reboot. I struggled with this process for a long time before I just made my program reboot at the end. I looked into making Explorer refresh itself, which is the process that happens after you load a new color scheme, or switch from XP to classic. When that "please wait" box shows up and your desktop turns grayscale, also this happens when you logoff. Here are the things I wrote down in my notes. I don't know exactly what they mean now. I think I was trying to call the system command that triggered the "Theme Change" so it would re-read the font. Anyways I was doing this through AUTOit but like I said I couldn't figure it out. So unless you can get Windows to recognize a theme change and redraw the desktop, you'll need to reboot. Not even restarting explorer.exe (the existing process) allowed the change to occur. Or perhaps there is another way to automate the installation of a font.

iTunes now supports gapless and crossfade, but it seems to determine how to mix tracks all by itself.