What routine processes the ASMS folder?

[HeyMister]

I'm guessing the numeric folders in ASMS are to control the order and perhaps to synchronize with the rest of the installation process.

Am I getting warm?

[CoffeeFiend]

The installer WINNT32 does (technically speaking, the code is inside one of the DLLs used by it i.e. winnt32u.dll for the unicode version).

Why does it use numbered directories? No idea, never really looked or cared.

May I ask why you worry so much over such a tiny part of the install process, of a now obsolete installer? I can't really think of a reason why someone would waste time over this.

[HeyMister]

Crahak,

Because I'm working on a personal/custom install disk, and IMHE the devil is in the details.

Two install systems tied together like this is just ... weird. I distrust weird.

Let me propose that if there is no sequence control, and a dll is installed from TXTSETUP.SIF overwriting one from ASMS, that it would be absolutely undetectable. indistinguishable from, say, Automatic Updates. Does that sound like a good thing?

Right now, I haven't an install disk. I have a license, but a fat lot of good that does me. So I'm working from available images that aren't exactly what I want. I'm putting things in and I'm taking things out. One does not take things out without understanding how they fit in and how they got there.

More information is better than less.

[bj-kaiser]

personally I like the process Vista uses, ie. a sysprepped image is unpacked to the system partition.

however, with XP you have some troubles there, mass storage drivers being one of them.

I have one pet project at google code, trying to "missuse" the Vista WAIK for XP. Only that I recently hadnt much time to put into it, due to some big relocations at work. I'm wondering if some people shouldnt join forces on something like that. (since my project is more a hack-around by a single person and not really usable right now)

[CoffeeFiend]

Two install systems tied together like this is just ... weird. I distrust weird.

There's more than just txtsetup.inf and asms. There's many more inf files, various cabinet files, registry hives, etc. There's several different stages, where different things are done. There's WAY more to it than just coping files listed in one inf file.

And it's not as much weird as undocumented. They never meant the installer to be toyed with pretty much, so there is no documentation (back in those NT 3.1 days, there hardly was any docs for anything in the first place). They put in place some ways to tweak what most people would have to (e.g. winnt.sif) and that's about it.

Let me propose that if there is no sequence control, and a dll is installed from TXTSETUP.SIF overwriting one from ASMS, that it would be absolutely undetectable. indistinguishable from, say, Automatic Updates.

I don't think you could make that happen, not that easily at least. Windows normally doesn't let you screw around with WinSxS too much, and assemblies need their catalogs & manifests (they wouldn't match with the other DLL). They do have a specific way they build the WinSxS store from different assemblies. It wouldn't let you just overwrite anything blindly like that, in special/protected spaces. And automatic updates don't quite work in the same way.

It's been a good while since I really looked at the installer itself in depth, and since now we've essentially ditched that old POS, I can't really see myself waste too much time over that again. A custom winnt.sif + the $OEM$\* directories is pretty much all I ever needed to make any install disc do exactly what I wanted it to (well, along with some reg tweaks, batch files and scripts).

Anyways, I wish you luck in your quest for the perfect disc