VISTA SP2 reverse, but trying to get rid of extraction directory

[mikesw]

I have OEM pre-activated Vista Ultimate that I'm trying to integrate SP1 and SP2 through reverse

integration. I have WAIK 1.1. After install of the OS and SP's, I created the install.wim file. However,

I noticed two issues when WAIK mounts it.

a). A approx 20+ character extraction directory was not removed during SP install and thus during reverse integ

of the VISTA OS, it ended up in the install.wim file. Moreover, since this is treated as a disk when mounted,

I see $AVG at the root attached to the mount subdirectory whereby AVG antivirus creates this virus vault.

Will the $AVG be appart of my install.wim file once it is committed and unmounted?

I tried changing ownership, permissions=full to try and remove the 20+ character extraction directory which is

in the mount point of the install.wim, but it keeps stating the the disk is full, that something is using it etc.Thus,

how do I get rid of this directory so that the install.wim is clean and doesn't show this extracted directory name? I

suppose I could repeat the slipping process and then check and remove extraction directories created on the disk

before comitting and unmounting the install.wim (about 4 hours to do the whole process over again). Hopefully there

is a better way now that the install.wim already has it.

b). I have integrated IE8 into the OEM install DVD with only one error being generated for "x86...servicingstack......".

It was trying to find this in the "Servicing" subdirectory too although it found it in the 'wsxs" subdirectory. IE8 full install

seems to show up when the Vista OS is completely reinstalled. However, I also tried to slip in the Oct 2009

service pack for IE8, but this didn't seem to get slipped into the OS since when I reinstalled the Vista OS and went

to About IE8, it doesn't show the new version number associated with the IE8, nor does it show up under

installed software. How to get it to slip IE8 SP's since MSofts site says this will integrate the same way on VISTA

although the last resort is to install Vista and do the reverse integration to capture the installed IE8 SP.

Edited November 10, 2009 by mikesw

[cluberti]

To determine the build of IE8, you must look at an associated binary (wininet.dll is a good one to check) rather than iexplore.exe (where help>about gets the version number), since cumulative updates do not update iexplore.exe. I can't easily answer the first other than the $AVG folder - the answer to that is yes, and as such you should exclude your mount directory from AVG scanning, etc to try to avoid that. The rest I would need to know if you ran the SP1 and SP2 cleanup utilities after installing each service pack, etc - but I have heard of folders that you just cannot delete from a mount point, and it could be that this folder will be required after the sysprep boot. Hard to say, if you could provide a bit more info that would help.

[mikesw]

I used ccleaner to prevent AVG from starting up in the task bar and this didn't cure the $AVG being in the install.wim file. Thus, I'll try to prevent AVG from scanning this mounted file as you mentioned above.

If the mount directory is C:\VISTA\mount\.... do I have to exclude VISTA, then VISTA\mount and I wouldn't

have to do all the directories/subdirectories under the 'mount' point?

Yes, both SP1 and SP2 were reverse integrated at the same time with the clean tool for each one run on them as

they were installed before using WAIK to sysprep them. Vlite wasn't used although I've done that with SP1 slipping on an RTM AIO disk without issues.

That's interesting that the SP's don't update the IE about version number. Moreover, the wininet.dll can be different versions for the same IE release or SP release, since one verson can be for VISTA no SP, different for SP1 and different SP2 too. I noticed this on WinxP which has SP2 vs. SP3 versions of this file.

I'll lookup the content of the subdirectories in more detail tonight. The extraction directory though contains alot

of language codes i.e. en-ENU, and all the other various languages, and within that are a few *.mui files.

More details later. Once I did a complete reinstall of VISTA, I could easily go to this extraction direction that was

copied from install.wim to the disk and remove it on the HDD, but just not on the mounted install.wim to save me

a step.

Another issue, is even though I logged in as administrator on the computer, during integ of the SP's some files on the

mount and (sub)directories will have the ownership not as Administrators but as "computername\Administrator". Thus ones computer name will be recorded or associated with an install.wim file. So does it matter if the owner is set to

"NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" for all files or Administrator vs. Administrators (the plural form)? I guess if it has to

be a certain owner type, one could log into their regular user account that has admin priveleges and just do a "run as" command such that during integration of the SP that the "runas" command will stamp it with the runas username name and not ones own personnel account name. So, one should be able to do "run as" Administrator (or plural form) to have

all files that were modified in the install.wim have the correct ownership.

Edited November 10, 2009 by mikesw

[cluberti]

That's interesting that the SP's don't update the IE about version number. Moreover, the wininet.dll can be different versions for the same IE release or SP release, since one verson can be for VISTA no SP, different for SP1 and different SP2 too. I noticed this on WinxP which has SP2 vs. SP3 versions of this file.

That's correct - there's a branch of the IE code tree for each supported platform and supported service pack, as well as a GDR (general distribution release) and LDR (QFE for IE6 - limited distribution release/quick fix engineering, aka the "hotfix branch") subbranch for each as well. IE has worked like this for many versions, so unfortunately you can't pick out a specific version based on help > about.

[mikesw]

The extraction directory contains alot of subdirectories that are named based on a language code. So for example,

there is a subdirectory called en-us. In this directory like all the other language subdirectories there are two files.

They are, spinstall.exe.mui and spwizui.dll.mui. I still can't remove this extraction directory, and when I exclude (using AVG tool) the drive letter I'm integrating on i.e G:, the subdirectory G:\VISTA and G:\VISTA\mount the $AVG in the root for G: and G:\VISTA\mount are not removed, nor can I delete them. For G:\VISTA, there is no $AVG here.

I was able to integrate the IE8 SP1 into the VISTA install.wim after IE8 was merged in. The reason it wouldn't do it for me is because I made a mistake in the xml filename. IE8 started the xml filename with "Windows6.0...." whereas IE8 SP1 started it with "IE8-Windows6.0....". Although the docs state go to slp.log (this is a binary) the correct one should be slip.log.txt. In this file I saw the following issues.

a). unable to prestage file "ieuinit.inf" for component x86_microsoft-windows-ie-setup-support-31bf3856ad364e35_8.0.6001.18828_none_a8ac3b48744f86de.

b ). The payload directory for candidate component x86_microsoft-windows-ie-setup-support_31bf3856ad364e35_8.0.6001.22918_none_a94a0a7ff8d650ab7 does not exist.

I guess it's safe to ignore these error messages along with 3 servicingstack Object Not found errors when it tried to look in the servicing subdirectory but found them in the wsxs subdirectory.

As for ownership of the files within install.wim when mounted, what should they be? Could they all be assigned

to "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" vs. Administrators or the S- ..... number?

Edited November 10, 2009 by mikesw