"Classic Folder View"

[pkx]

I apologize for asking a similar question in a different thread, but I'm really hoping that someone else will come up with any other ideas.

Here's the situation: I'm trying to automatically turn on 'Classic Folder View' during an unattended XP install. The version of XP I have already has SP1a slipstreamed into it (I don't have the original installation media ). Therefore, SP2 will not slipstream into this "already slipstreamed" install. If I try, I get a manifest parse error upon startup.

The Classic Folder View appears to be associated with the following registry keys:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]"ShellState"=hex:24,00,00,00,33,88,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\

  01,00,00,00,0d,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]

"WebView"=dword:00000000

"ClassicViewState"=dword:00000001

What I am doing is this:

1) cmdlines.txt is importing all of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER keys, including the keys above.

2) cmdlines.txt is also entering RunOnceEx keys into the registry

Upon unattended install, the "welcome to windows" screen pops up, asks you to register, etc. After you have typed in your name, the RunOnceEx keys are executed. Office 2003 is installed, along with the powertoys, Service Pack 2, and some additional registry keys (that aren't part of HKCU). Just for kicks, I have the above "classic folder view" registry keys inserted again. The system is then rebooted.

After reboot, you login...

and the ShellState and WebView keys have changed! (Specifically, the '88' is changed to 'a8' in ShellState, and WebView is changed from '0' to '1'). Of course these changes turn classic folder view back off.

I don't know what is causing these keys to be changed. SP2 install maybe?

My next step is to remove all software install components from RunOnceEx, then re-add them one-by-one, going through the entire install process each time. Of course, this will take me many many hours in VMware. Does anyone have any idea of what could be resetting these keys?

If someone comes up with it, I'll paypal you $20. Seriously. It's been bugging me that much.

[pkx]

Well, I've finally solved my problem.

I'm still not sure what caused it.

All I know is:

If the keys were entered in via RunOnceEx after all of my apps installed, it was somehow overwritten by the time explorer started. Even without a reboot (I disabled the shutdown in my cleanup.cmd being called in runonceex temporarily), the keys had changed.

I know that the windows startup group is the last thing to load... so I had my cleanup.cmd copy a batch file into %userprofile%\programs\start menu\startup.

The batch file inserted the registry keys then it deleted itself.

voila. That fixed the problem. I re-enabled the shutdown command... re-built the ISO, and tried it in VMware and it worked beautifully.

odd.