Differences between Types of Windows...

[Siginet]

I'm gonna list in here my file comparisons between the different types of Windows. Like Corp, Retail, OEM, Upgrade and so on...

First I compaired XP Pro, Corp, OEM, Retail and Upgrade:

XP Pro Corp vs XP Pro OEM:

DPCDLL.DL_

EULA.TXT

OEMBIOS.BI_

OEMBIOS.CA_

OEMBIOS.DA_

OEMBIOS.SI_

PIDGEN.DLL

SETUPP.INI

Other Files that may or may not be different in your files:

WINNT.SIF : This will more than likley be different if you use it because each OS uses a different Product Key.

SVCPACK.IN_ or SVCPACK.INF : This may be different if you install different programs through svcpack between the different OSes. mine were different because I use OEMScan on my OEM files.

XP Pro OEM Vs Retail Vs Upgrade Vs Corp

Retail and Upgrade seem to share all of the exact same files as of SP3. I am not sure exactly how an Upgrade disk is determined when compaired to a Retail disk in SP3. I know in SP2 and previous that an Upgrade disk had a different SETUPREG.HIV file. I am assuming now it must be determined with the setupp.ini file... but my retail and upgrade disks have the same setupp.ini file now. So I probably have an invalid Upgrade disk and need to get a valid one to be sure I am correct. Or... now you can use a retail or upgrade product key on either and it is determined by the type of product key you use. (I haven't tested this theory yet though.)

Retail, OEM and Upgrade all share the exact same DPCDLL.DL_ and PIDGEN.DLL files.

The only version that has different DPCDLL.DL_ and PIDGEN.DLL files is Corp.

Corp, Upgrade and Retail all share the same OEMBIOS.CAT file. But OEM has a different OEMBIOS.CAT file.

My quick explanation of the files:

EULA.TXT is actually not very important... it is more of a visual for the user. It plays no significant part in the OS determining what type it is. But to keep things perfect this file is different.

PIDGEN.DLL and DPCDLL.DLL are both used to validate the product key. I don't know exactly how... but it depends on the information found in SETUPP.INI and the type of OEMBIOS.* files.

SETUPP.INI is a file that can be used to specify wether it is CORP RETAIL OEM and possibly Upgrade. So this is the MAIN file to determin the OS type.

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XP Home OEM Vs Retail Vs Upgrade

The home edition follows all of the same guidelines as the Professional version except there is no Corp version (Legally anyways).

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I am sure XP Media Center Edition follows the same rules as the above as well.

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So all you need to do on your usb sticks are to save these files into corresponding folders so that you can boot into your PE environment before installing and overwrite the different files. This will save tons of space on your sticks!

Edited January 21, 2009 by Siginet

[jaclaz]

Siginet,

please don't take this a critic to what you posted , but what would really be useful would be the same information (or possibly enhanced) about recent (SP2/SP3) CD's in a format similar to the comparisons done a long time ago by the tacktech guys:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=101

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=103

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=104

I don't know the program they used, but the result is very easy to read/use.

Of course if you have the source CD's and the time....

jaclaz

[Siginet]

I actually plan on going in more depth with the compairisons. I just wanted to start a main thread for me to post my findings. Thanks for the links. I'll look into them as well.

I was also going to do compairisons on the files placed on the usb drive as well so I can see all of the differences.

I'm thinking it would be great if we created a tool to use that would be able to swap any different files, remove files, place files as needed between many different versions. Or possibly figure out a way to sync all of the different OSes together in one dirrectory and use multiple txtsetup files to tell setup which files are needed for each OS. I know it can't be done on a cd... but I really think it would be possible on a usb stick... which would be amazing.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Siginet