Unattended Website Additions

[Vadikan]

Wow, prathapml, thanks for the input!

[Alanoll]

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Everything past this line, may not make it into the first update of the guide...

Planning has started....

[DigeratiPrime]

"prathapml at the bell!" Some great suggestions there. I'm very excited and looking forward to the revision! Better organization and Screenshots, this guide is going to be mint!

[Alanoll]

I'm not sure all of prathapml's suggestions will make it into the update

So far, the "Graduate" section of the site, is an oddbal assortment of leftovers. lol.

[prathapml]

@Alanoll

You ABSOLUTELY gotta include this suggestion in the guide.

On the page where you talk about winnt.sif:

1. Have a small para about not saving your uA answer file as "winnt.sif.txt"

2. Another sentence saying that unless you have OEMpreinstall set to yes, your $OEM$ folder will not be copied over.

These two ghosts of ambiguous words in the guide, have dogged us for long enough.

[prathapml]

Yet another suggestion....

In the section (of the guide) about slip-streaming, can you please have 2 levels of skill ? (like the office 2k3/XP has)

One level of skill for the beginner, that uses nLite to narrate the process, like the present "Universal guide for slip-streaming".

Another "advanced" level, that leads you through the process of manually integrating SP2 into XP.

Reasons why nLite method should not be the only recommended method. That same topic would also tell you about a small mis-link in the guide, too. Moreover, its almost the same number of steps to do slip-streaming manually, as it is to do via nLite. As for a non-newbie, he'd far prefer not using third-party tools.

Now, for a person who has copied his XP CD to HD for automation, its not unreasonable to expect that he should know how to do the slip-streaming too, by himself. One of the most happy moments, I think, are when you do things yourself - and you have control over it when doing so. I don't know why the previous slip-streaming guide (manual process) was discarded in favour of forcibly using .NET-based nLite. No offense to the tool here - I'm a big-time fan of it actually - but give an alternative (which happens to be the original way).

I'd like to see a slip-stream guide like Paul Thurrott's. Incidentally, he's not patented the method (sarcastic) - its certainly public knowledge. So having the same thing modified (with credits, if so desired) and put in the guide should not cause any problems.

[Alanoll]

i was intending to have three ways....

the one using nLite.

one using a batch script I might whip up (asks the user for hte path)

and then showing step by step what to do manually.

[prathapml]

i was intending to have three ways....

fantastic.

[Vadikan]

I can make a guide on manual slipstreaming of SP2. Anyway, I have it in Russian. Actually, I have it two ways: with extracting and direct integration. The latter is enough, I think. I can redo the screenshots to remove the signature. The only problem is English is not my native language

[prathapml]

I'm back for yet more additions.

This is for the slip-streaming section, probably FAQ of sorts (like you already have in nLite forum).

1. Get the dang idents in place, otherwise you'll be asked to insert your CD in the floppy drive.

2. If you have an OEM disk (most notorious problematic one being dell) which is not allowing SP2 to be merged into the I386 dir, delete SVCPACK.IN* and any folders by name SVCPACK or UPDATE.

[SlimShady]

I'm back for yet more additions.

Y'know, you should make a guide yourself.

[prathapml]

Y'know, you should make a guide yourself.

And I would have, too!

Just turns out that Alanoll was allotted this thingie before i mustered enough courage to put up my hand for the re-design. So I took the easy way out and did not show up my hand, lol.

But well, contributing from the sides is not quite so demanding, so I keep doing that. (in the process, increasing the load on him)

Yes, I'm not averse to doing some pages myself too - but then the entire site would gel together only if its a single person handling it. Too many cooks spoil the broth!

[prathapml]

Let's have a "trouble-shooting your batch-files" page in advanced/graduate section:

1. A point in the FAQ saying that while having any problems with your winnt.sif or batch-files, first thing to check for is illegal characters, or non-ANSI text file.

2. About using the PAUSE command strategically (when you're still testing things), after every app-install, so you can see the output.

3. Teach 'em to try out batch-files first within normal install windows itself.

And to learn how app-switches work - try out the commands from a DOS prompt! Without this basic point, people start thinking that batch-files, commands and such... are something greatly high in programmer-land - and that they can't fix it themselves. Let them know that a batch-file is nothing more than the commands that you run at a CMD prompt, strung together for "executing one after another". (might not seem such a great deal to you, but when its an abstract concept for a new-comer, he will put-off his uA project for later, like I did for 3 months, lol).

And in the "explaining how batch-files work" page (of point 3 just above), probably a link to a real good site, explaining about DOS commands and how they they work and how they end up as batch-files - is invaluable for a newbie. Attached is a page, of the type that I think is appropriate as a "starter".

The_lost_art_of_batch_scripting....htm

[DigeratiPrime]

not sure if this was definitive, but its a better way to set the drive in runonceex which some people already are using. why not make it the default?

cmdow @ /HID
@echo off

for %%a in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do if exist %%a:\win51ip.SP2 set CDROM=%%a:

EXIT

[Alanoll]

Yes, I'm not averse to doing some pages myself too - but then the entire site would gel together only if its a single person handling it. Too many cooks spoil the broth! 

Plus besides Aaron and xper, I've the only other one with access (perhaps the other admin as well).

Hopefully my sarcasm doesn't make it to the guide Sure most of the time it gets the point across, but in a guide, it's not suitable. I don't think I've used any yet. I might in some of the FAQ answers though....