Unintentional Classic Theme After Silent Install

[Cartoonite]

Well, not sure whether I should laugh or cry. I ran the uA with Astalavista's tweaks and my corrected batch files and the Luna theme was properly applied on startup. Am I the only one who thinks this doesn't make any sense?

More testing is definitely in order. It's a good thing I'm already crazy, otherwise this stoopid issue would certainly be sending me there.

@prathapml

This issue is starting to look more and more random every day, too. Thankfully it really isn't any more critical than your issue with $Docs not being copied properly, I'm just really picky.

Starting over is a good idea, and I suspect I will at least once before this whole thing is over. At the moment I am somewhat headed in the opposite direction: taking my current, buggy CD and removing changes one at a time until it behaves the way it is supposed to. Or until I remove everything I possibly can and get forced into spending several productive hours inventing swear words, whichever comes first.

Edit Hey, I just noticed: I got a star. YAY! Uh, just out of curiosity, wth does it mean?

[Alanoll]

just for fun...

Go to the run box (Start>>Run or <WindowsKey><R>)

Type : services.msc

Look for the Themes service, and if it's running. If it isn't, somewhere somehow it's getting disabled. If it's NOT there, you may have used nLite or somehow the source got corrupted.

[Cartoonite]

just for fun...

Go to the run box (Start>>Run or <WindowsKey><R>)

Type : services.msc

Look for the Themes service, and if it's running. If it isn't, somewhere somehow it's getting disabled. If it's NOT there, you may have used nLite or somehow the source got corrupted.

It is there, and it is running. Not surprising, really, since the current test install is a functioning one. I will look again if I can manage to recreate the problem. Thanks for the idea.

Edit: Service is also present and running after a "faulty" install.

Edited December 19, 2004 by Cartoonite

[prathapml]

and get forced into spending several productive hours inventing swear words, whichever comes first.

Ha ha....

Edit Hey, I just noticed: I got a star. YAY! Uh, just out of curiosity, wth does it mean?

As for the star, its a gradation scale of how crazy you are getting, by the day.

naah... just messing with ya...

It means you are past a certain point on the forum. There's boundary marks set, which say, okay you've completed 50 posts so you get rid of the "newbie" title from your user title (below user name) and get 1 star.

Now why does those stars exist? Its nothing but some sort of level-defining factors used on forums, to prompt you to be more active on the forums. For example, if you make 100 posts, you get 2 stars - so that's a motivating factor (sort of). Plus, as you get more stars your member title would change too (advanced member, senior member, etc.) - because its obvious that if you made 500 posts and still didn't get banned, those posts weren't spam/junk, there was some value behind it. As you look around, you will see how people with different numbers of posts have different stars. But don't give too much relevance to that - sharing knowledge is all we care for. At the end of the day, we are all here for precisely that - to know more (and socialise/make friends too, probably).

[BeenThereB4]

shutdown.exe -r -f -t 60 -c "Windows XP will now restart in 1 minute, this will give enough time ...

...for the shortcuts to update and for the shell to fully load before its ready to restart!"

It's possible that 60 seconds is not long enough for your PC to initialize. This will give the symptoms that you have. Try 120 seconds as a test.

[Astalavista]

so dude i dont understand with my reg tweaked it worked or not?

for those who tried to download my regtweak u can't open it. cuz i password protected it.

[ThatGuyPSU]

shutdown.exe -r -f -t 60 -c "Windows XP will now restart in 1 minute, this will give enough time ...

...for the shortcuts to update and for the shell to fully load before its ready to restart!"

It's possible that 60 seconds is not long enough for your PC to initialize. This will give the symptoms that you have. Try 120 seconds as a test.

I always keep my shutdown value at zero (impatient, much?). Is that the reason why I also get the classic theme instead of Luna?

[BeenThereB4]

I always keep my shutdown value at zero (impatient, much?). Is that the reason why I also get the classic theme instead of Luna?

Yes, that will do it!

[prathapml]

I always keep my shutdown value at zero (impatient, much?).  Is that the reason why I also get the classic theme instead of Luna?

Great!

Probably the recommended time gap, about initialising the interface, was recommended without a reason? ha ha

Whatever theme is seen at shutdown, gets used as the theme at next startup. So yeah, as they said, increase the time gap so as to let the desktop load.

[Cartoonite]

It's possible that 60 seconds is not long enough for your PC to initialize. This will give the symptoms that you have. Try 120 seconds as a test.

Thanks for the info and advice. I will certainly test this.

so dude i dont understand with my reg tweaked it worked or not?

The last install I tested with your tweaks did work. There were also a couple (virtual) hardware changes made at the same time. When I retested after replacing (rereplacing?) your tweaks with my own and used the same virtual hardware, it also worked as it should.

So, short answer: Yes, it worked with your tweaks. Long answer: it also worked without your tweaks.

As I said before, I don't think the issue lies in the registry tweaks. I suspect BeenThereB4 has got it right. I will post back after I do some more testing and have definitive results.

[Masters]

I know that I'm new to this forum but I believe that the problem that you are experiencing cartoonite is one related to a timing issue. For example for me I know that in my Winnt.sif file my command come after any other settings in the file. That means if I have made any changes in my unattended install that they can possible be overwritten by changes in my .cmd or whatever script you are using. A solution would be to write a script or cmd to undone some of the changes made by your custom batch file or script.

[Astalavista]

I hv always used 60 seconds.

what is your computer specs? maybe bec. u hv an old machine?

can i ask did u happen to hv used nlite?

[ocle]

I've done an unattended setup from within winxp by running winnt32.exe and when it was finished, it had a custom windows classic theme by default. Which was identical to the theme I was using when I started the setup.

I don't know if that's what your doing, or if your actually starting setup by booting from the cdrom.

[Cartoonite]

I know that I'm new to this forum...

No worries about being new. It doesn't make your opinions and thoughts any less valid. If you look closely, you might notice that you and I both joined on the same day. The only real difference is that it appears I have a much bigger mough.

As to your solution, you're right, that could be a potential issue. However, I can attest that, in my case, there is nothing in either the cmd files or the regtweaks (mine, not Astalavista's; I've yet to take the time to fully examine that massive file) that should have any effect on the theme.

what is your computer specs? maybe bec. u hv an old machine?

can i ask did u happen to hv used nlite?

Although not completely ancient (I think the oldest part is 3 or 4 years old), this box is a little older than I would like. I'm running an Athlon XP 1800+ on an ASUS A7V333 mobo with 1GB of DDR RAM. I suspect the 60-second dely would be fine if I were using the uA on this box itself, but I am using VPC to test. VPC, as many of us know, is ridculously slow, almost regardless of what kind of resources you throw at it.

I did use nLite to remove some of the more troublesome Windows components like WMP that cannot simply be opted out of. Everything else (SP2 and hotfix integration, WINNT.SIF, etc...) was done manually.

I've done an unattended setup from within winxp by running winnt32.exe and when it was finished, it had a custom windows classic theme by default. Which was identical to the theme I was using when I started the setup.

I don't know if that's what your doing, or if your actually starting setup by booting from the cdrom.

I am testing on a clean, unpartitioned, unformatted virtual drive in VPC. The install is launched directly from the CD.

ISSUE RESOLVED!

I have applied BeenThereB4's recommended fix, and it seems to have conclusively resolved the issue. I bumped the delay up to 5 minutes, figuring not even VPC, the ultimate tortoise, would take longer than that to initialize. Hopefully I will be able to cut it way back once I burn the CD for real-world use, but for now, a 5-minute VPC delay won't kill me.

Thanks to all who helped out on this one. If I find any more information I think may be useful, I will be sure to add it here. In the meantime I will move on to see what other interesting things I can break.

[prathapml]

@Cartoonite

The 5 minute time wasting, and the hours of time wasted to install, is simply too bad - VPC is ridiculous. VMware is the way to go for speed.

My uA install takes 28 mins on real machine, and 30 mins in VM (and this is WITH an immense lot of apps installed - 4 GB, but I did various optmizations to cut down time of install).