Install with Win Tablet PC recovery cd (PE based)?

[jediscorpian]

Dear all,

I have a ViewSonic TabletPC V1250 shipped with 2 recovery CDs (not the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Installation CD Pack), which seems based on WinPE. The CDs is shipped in order to boot machine and do a recovery task including install OS and driver and so on.

My issue is that the laptop was shipped without external bootable device such as floppy and CD-ROM drives so I have to install through PXE boot. I have tried install a seperate Win XP Pro through RIS and get successful. How can I make tablet pc installation images on the RIS server with the 2 recovery CDs? (RIS does not accept image making by specifying the CD-ROM only, how to make use of the \i386, \i386preload files on the recovery CDs?)

Thanks,

[jediscorpian]

A minor question together with this topic:

My recovery CD pack is a Simplified Chinese version. How can I install a English version or English MUI on the Tablet PC (and with the license of the Chinese one)? I have English Windows XP Pro installation CD but no English Tablet PC Edition.

[RogueSpear]

I ran into a similar situation as yours when my primary employer aquired several Gateway Tablet notebooks. Gateway supplied a recovery DVD that also appears to be PE based. It appears that a file, SETUPP.INI, located in i386 is at least partly responsible for the setup routine determining which XP (Corp vs. Tablet) will install.

Ultimately I would love to have a single RIS image for both installs. My line of thought was to use different answer files for each install. Then I was trying to figure a way to get Tablet to install using my select license key to avoid having to bother with activition and all of its ugliness. So far I have not succeeded in that endeavor.

What I have settled for at the moment is this: I made a second RIS image of Windows XP from a slipstreamed SP2 CD. I replaced the SETUPP.INI file in the image intended for TabletPC with the SETUPP.INI file from the recovery DVD and used one of the keys from a TabletPC in the SIF file for that image. It does work. You can RIS TabletPC 2005 just fine. You're stuck with activation however, and I've had some problems with it.

Someone who is two levels of rank above me fancies himself as an advanced computer expert but is really nothing more than a neophyte. Well he found a BIOS update from the OEM who actually supplies Gateway with the computers (Gateway simply sticks their name all over it). He applied the BIOS update and it changed everything so dramatically that the OS locked itself out, demanding reactivation. When he tried to reactiviate, he was basically told no way. So eventually I had to boot this thing up with ERD Commander to flash it back. The whole thing has been a pain in the neck. I'm seriously just considering installing vanilla XP SP2 on these computers since NOBODY EVER uses the tablet features.

Anyway, enough of my rants. I hope this helps you out some. BTW I did find some interesting information about the SETUPP.INI file over at www.tech-hints.com. I just haven't had the time to mess around at all with the information I got over there.

[ToBe]

a way to get Tablet to install using my select license key to avoid having to bother with activition

The install of TabletPC depends on the cd-key. You'll have to call Microsoft about a volume license key for TabletPC. When/if you get it, all you have to do is create a XP Pro volume license cd, with the cmpnents folder from TabletPC on it.

You may also have to add the cd2 marker file, 'WIN51IP2', in the root of the cd.

When you install with your XP Pro select key, Windows XP Pro gets installed, and if you use your TabletPC vlk, Windows TabletPC gets installed. All from the same media.

See more here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...y/sitpcdep.mspx

[jediscorpian]

But I am just not sure of which files correspond to "TabletPC.cab" and ?gcmpnents?h folder in a normal WinXP Tablet PC installation CD. Could you specify that?

Here comes the content of the recovery CDs

?iIt's too long to read. Please see the attached files?j

contents.txt

[RogueSpear]

@ToBe I think how it works is the key has a correspondence to the PID inside the SETUPP.INI file. I don't know why this all has to be so complicated. I'll have to see if MS will issue me a VLK for TabletPC under my current Select License.

[jediscorpian]

[continued post]

(for better read convenience I've enclosed the CD2 content in the attachment of my previous post)

[Jito463]

That is *way* too much information

[ToBe]

@jediscorpian:

Here's a list of files from a TabletPC 2005 cmpnents directory. I see that you have a compressed tabletpc.ca_ , extract that to tabletpc.cab:

expand tabletpc.ca_ tabletpc.cab

As for the other files, compare yours to my list, and see if you can sort them out.

list.txt

[jediscorpian]

@ToBe

Thanks for your list. But I cannot find files listed in my 2 CD.

Meanwhile, my tabletpc.ca_ is just 21KB and can be expanded to 94KB tabletpc.cab, but the tabletpc.cab seems to be a invalid package when I tried to see what's included.

In a word, these 2 recovery CDs seems quite different to the an installation 2CD pack and I am just confused where these core files are encapsulated into the CDs.