External winnt.sif

[Masters]

Is their any way to point the installation CD to an altenative installation file in another location, e.g. Network Drive, USB drive, secondary primary drive.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314472 Says the file could be located on a floppy at A:\ but at the stage that it would be accessed, i dont think it would be possible for windows to map to a network drive. You could setup windows to install from a PXE/RIS setup and install xp over the network but that might be overkill

[cdob]

No, you can't set another location for winnt.sif. CD and A:\ are fixed.

However you may use a virtual floppy in RAM.

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20543

[gosh]

Who says you can't? Why can't you load setupreg.hiv and change the SourcePath to the flash drive? Setup does load USB drivers so it can read the device.

-gosh

[Siginet]

Who says you can't? Why can't you load setupreg.hiv and change the SourcePath to the flash drive? Setup does load USB drivers so it can read the device.

-gosh

I don't think setup allways loads usb drivers. I actually created a disk once before that would search for files on a usb drive. It worked on most computers but some would fail because the usb drive was not detected.

I could be wrong... but I am almost positive that you can install windows using a different winnt.sif file by calling winnt32.exe and a parameter to your winnt.sif file. Allthough I don't know if that is exactly what you want.

what exactly are you wanting to accomplish? I suppose you want to be able to create a custom winnt.sif file for each computer you install? Or is it a specific winnt.sif file for some computers and another for some other computers? If you need to use a few (or more) winnt.sif files on a bunch of computers you can actually use Windows XP PowerPacker to accomplish this. It has the ability to make multiple winnt.sif files for use with your install disk.

To do this manually you just need to hex edit setupldr.bin. search for any instances of winnt.sif and replace the name with a new file name. Make sure the name is the exact same amount of characters as winnt.sif like "mynnt.sif". Make multiple copies of setupldr.bin with different winnt.sif names in them. like... "MyLoader1.bin", MyLoader2.bin", "MyLoader3.bin" and so on. Use BCDW to create a menu that points to the different Loader files and then you will have a disk which allows you to select different options.

Enjoy!

[Masters]

Okay sorry for the delay but how do you modify the setupreg.hiv. I had attempted to change the file .hiv to .txt and all I got was binary characters. What gives?

[cdob]

Setupreg.hiv is a registry file. Use regedt32.exe or regedit.exe and load file.

What do you like to do finally?

Do you need different winnt.sif?

Do you like loading PNP drivers from different locations?

[Masters]

Setupreg.hiv is a registry file. Use regedt32.exe or regedit.exe and load file.

What do you like to do finally?

Do you need different winnt.sif?

Do you like loading PNP drivers from different locations?

Well what I would like to do ultimately is have a DVD with all the programs and applications I would like to load and then depending on which machine I can use different winnt.sif files to change the name, organization, things like that. I figured that using an external file like what I used to do for 2000 would do the trick but with the removal of legacy drives I suspect that many users will not have a floppy disk drive. This means that I must used a usb thumb drive in order to hold the settings...

[cdob]

@Masters

If you like to create one DVD then follow Siginet's aproach.

Add different renamed winnt.sif to the DVD.