Tripredacus

Oh, no I wasn't interested in dual monitors. I don't have the extra power outlet required by an additional monitor, never mind the fact that I don't even have an extra. I just remember seeing documentation on it back in the day but couldn't find it now. Besides, does Windows 98 support dual monitors? I used to collect notebooks. I should take more time in playing with those instead...

How long does it hang there? For me it can take between 20 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on which motherboard is in the PC, for that to complete.

Ha that's funny. Well I can't find dual boards nor can I find info to shotgun the AGP card. So I'll stick with finding a Slot 1 4x AGP slot board instead for that one. OH and MMX, while you're at it, ask me why I am running NT 3.51 on a 486 notebook!

I tried running the included chkdsk that appears on the RAMDRIVE on the C: drive on a machine yesterday. While the command itself works fine, using the -r and/or -f switches gives you an error and asks you if you want to unmount the drive. Any idea why this is or does the PE just not support those functions?

Sometimes this error is caused by a disk being in a drive such as: CD/DVD, floppy, Zip or other removable media or flash memory. Your computer might not have all these drives but make sure they are all empty. Here are some related errors: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315403 Do you know what motherboard is in the computer? Also how the hard drive connects?

It looks like it is kept in the REG_BINARY key for "Order". But each folder (if you have folders or don't use links) have their own order key.

Well ALT+255 isn't NULL or SPACE... its the command for DELETE. So if you are having problems naming folders with the delete command, try using something else maybe? Windows really isn't designed to handle folders where their names are system commands.

I realise this. Of course my current motherboard has a 2x slot, I guess the card supports a 4x slot anyways. Its a 1x2x4x fortunately. I will have to check then perhaps I can shotgun with a PCI card instead? Does anyone know if the 6500 was ever released?

Well if you gotta ask... Its because they are the Voodoo5 5500 OH, I am not buying new video cards. This would replace my existing board. I already have all the parts just want 2 AGP for shotgun.

Oh you lucky bastard, you have TV in your area? I used to work for Verizon but in an area where just the internet was available. I like this board, the AOpen i965MGT-LA http://xc.aopen.com.tw/CubeProductnews_01.aspx?auno=8365 Unfortunately I only have experience with AOpen ITX boards. You only need something small eh?

I will check that out in the future. For this specific instance I found an extra notebook to put a HDD into and sysprep it.

My computer was set up by my old company. Windows update does not work because it tries to look for a SUS which doesn't exist. However I have no problems with it and apply fixes only if i need to.

Boot up with the F8 key to get the boot menu. Choose the option "disable automatic restart on system failure" and then choose XP. When you get the blue screen, the computer won't reboot. If it does you are in trouble. ANYWAYS, write down the message it gives you, post it here and we can better direct you to a cause and hopefully a solution.

That's the problem with "imaging" a set piece install - any updates to the base image, and you have to rebuild to accomplish this (well, almost always ). We moved to a flat-file based installation a long time ago, meaning we do NOT preinstall the OS, drivers, or any applications, and our images truly are universal for hardware. Also, because we make all tweaks and installation of any software post-image, changes are far quicker to make (and undo in the event of a negative side-effect). Does this take longer per install to push down? Yes, it does. Does it mean I can simply modify my scripts or SMS packages that install apps or make tweaks and not have to reimage? Yes, and that means I get the same installation every time, just like the image approach, but without the hardware/driver limitations and the requirement to redo the image when I need to change something. Again, just my .02¢. This was always my recommendation for RIS images, and with WDS+WIM it's no different (more options for the base image, but the same principles apply). @cluberti Yes your method is also viable. Its all about how you want to do it, and as long as it works then its fine to use it. When our accounts manager (the guy who handles who we are a customer of) had our regional Microsoft rep come to visit, he recommended that we follow a set of rules for Vista that pertain to the creation of images with WDS. So while your method is also viable, my company wants me to follow the directive of our Microsoft rep. @surfertje Which leads me to you. So you can either do it the way I do, or how cluberti does it, or make up your own way to do it. Here is a basic rundown of how we do Vista with ghost. 1. Install Vista using a DVD that the OPK/SIM creates for us. 2. Install the drivers needed for that system. 3. Install DVD software 4. Check the box for generalize in the Sysprep program and sysprep. 5. When the computer reboots (the default setting for Vista is reboot instead of XP/2003 it was Shut Down) we boot into Ghost. Then upload the image. Now if we need to add something, for example my original images didn't have DVD software on it, so I had to image a machine, install the software, generalize and sysprep and upload the image again. Basically, you sysprep with the generalize when you want to upload your image. After we image new machine, we do not step through the sysprep process, we accept the OEM agreement instead. We are also likely using a different version of Vista than you are, since we are an OEM we use Volume License. We put information into the BIOS and that handles the activation process as well. We are not actually allowed to (in most cases) run sysprep ourselves because we are not allowed to accept the End User License agreement. So I can't really tell you about the process or running sysprep on Vista because I do not actually do it myself. We also do not set up our Vista to automatically join a domain because that information is not ever provided to us by our customers.

I don't need a test! I already know I am not a true guy because of a genetic anomaly!

Today I was getting the STOP c000021a error when I tried to boot a computer into the WinPE. I have resolved this issue as I looked in the Event Viewer on the server and found this: Source: WDSServer Type: Error ID: 769 Desc: An error occurred while trying to create the UDP endpoint for WDSPXE provider on interface 192.168.0.5:67 (ed: also 68) This can happen if the network interface was disabled or changed or some other application is ... blah blah blah Error Information: 0x2740 Basically, I determined that I couldn't boot (SOME) computers to the PE while I was uploading a large image (with fast compression) on a machine that was already booted. It would start booting the PE, copy the files to the ramdrive, etc, but the port would get taken over by the machine uploading the image, causing the file transfer DOWN to stop to the new client and create the STOP error. Now, the computer we currently have WDS on is a 2003 server and I know it only supports unicast. Since 2008 supports multicast, will this issue be resolved when we upgrade? Is this issue caused because 2003 can't handle both connections?

Does anyone know of any Intel CPU based (not necessarily chipset) that has 2 AGP slots in it? It needs to support 2x AGP. I need this board for my Windows 98 computer since it's motherboard is basically dead. Anyone ever heard of such a thing?

I don't have this computer yet. My computer right now runs XP on a system I can't upgrade the CPU on. The ram would cost nearly the price of the system I outlined above if I were to go to 2GB. Here are my current specs: Intel D850MV (3rd rev) 512MB (2x256) 168-pin RAMBUS (first gen) @800MHz (Samsung) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz CPU (max supported by rev, no hyper-threading support) ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB AGP 4x (card is 4x8x but board is 2x4x) It is still possible to upgrade the video card, but paying $900 to get 2 sticks of 1GB PC800 RDRAM... I'll start with 2GB just to get started, and increase later up to 8GB, as well as add the second video card. Now I'm just waiting for that Economic Incentive check to come in... and I gotta prepare me a Vista Business x64 install with vLite.

Using separate WIMs defeats the purpose of using WIMs altogether. You are best to use a separate WIM for each OS, so one for XP and one for Vista. This is decrease your storage requirements. Look into the command for appending images. The drop down menu shows images on the share in alphebetical order, although you could re-script it to show in another way. It also doesn't travel through directories, but you can have access to them via the browse button. I have not seen an SOP from Microsoft on WDS that says you should use subdirectories in your network share.

I believe the recommendation for OEMPnPDriversPath is to not have so much stuff. ie use \drivers\TYPE where type is NIC, Video, etc. Here is the one I use for example: UpdateInstalledDrivers=yes DriverSigningPolicy=ignore OemPnPDriversPath=\drivers\nic;\drivers\1394

My computer at home doesn't have any service packs installed... but I do have USB 2.0 functionality.

This is kind of a general question really. The first thing is that you need to recreate the issue in a lab environment because users don't think like techs do. You need to eval their systems, find out what processes are running, if they are going online for things or they have a custom screensaver set up, or their disk space is running out, or they need a defrag. There are way to many reasons you are getting this event.

You don't need the registry to do it. You just use the ASCII code to type illegal characters. I used to use this in Windows 98 to create folders. People wouldn't be able to open the folder, delete it or anything. It would give a file system error. But in XP it can still open the folder even if you give it a non-standard "character" so I don't see the point really. You might want to look up that trick of embedding a JPG onto a RAR or ZIP file to make it act like a picture but you could open it with WinRAR or whatever and get your files out.

If you have the classic start menu enabled, you can customize the desktop to not show the My Computer icon, or any of them except the Recycle Bin. By default if you switch to classic, all those icons from the XP menu move to the desktop. You can also use the classic look with the XP style. I forget how its done but you can use that if you don't like a green start button.

I've never had any problems installing software. Drivers on the otherhand can be tricky. Usually video and sound drivers don't stay after a generalize. We don't do many Vista orders so we don't even use a sysprep.inf. And yes you don't need a HAL or Mass Storage Controller specified for Vista, it figures that out for you. For example, I've dropped the image, installed Nero and resealed it again without a problem. Of course after we image it with the generalized image to another machine, when we get the welcome screen we accept the System Builder's license (CTRL+SHIFT+F3) and do not go through the actual sysprep. When the machine is ready then we do a final sysprep but do not generalize it. Then you can set up the machine as you'd like it. I am sure there are way easier or better ways of dealing with Vista and Ghost but we haven't done enough volume to work with it that much. Something like 99% of our customer opt for Downgrade Rights so we install XP on their machines. Also with XP, there is no generalise option. You want to create your XP image with an ACPI_APIC_UP HAL. This image can only be used on machines that have ACPI enabled, and can work on single and multi-core/CPU machines.