what kind of program to work on?

[XtremeMaC]

hi there

as i'm very bored i'm looking for ways to contribute to msfn.

we've many great apps developed by our members,

i've been thinking of what program I should work on for msfn but couldn't find much alternatives, being 5:00am in the morning, its hard to find

so does anyone have any suggestion on what else msfn needs besides current programs?

Thanks!

[MCT]

i know something id like

a regsnap utility that saves to INF! lol, u up 4 the job ive got no programming skills

[XtremeMaC]

it already exist..

its called regshot,

http://regshot.yeah.net/

http://regshot.isd.md/

http://www.digitalnuke.com/

saves in inf format, that u can append to hive files...

any other ideas?

[jaclaz]

Well, I do have an idea.

Maybe a long shot, though.

A big problem EVERYONE interested in Windows modding has is the booting from CD/USB stick, etc.

There is no freeware/open source tool that I know of that can boot an NT based system from a DISK IMAGE, being it either an ISO or a FAT/NTFS filesystem RAW IMAGE, unless you go all the way with Syslinux, loopback, etc. (and, maybe it's me, I never succeeded with it)

It is possible, as there is (or better there was, as the works seem to have stopped)

this COMMERCIAL software:

AbsoluteBoot

http://www.apct.net/en/products/AB.php3

it is a French company that developed two products, one for NT 4.00, and

the other for win2k that allows to make a bootable CD-ROM (not unlike

WinPE or BartPE). The difference is that you image your system exactly

as it is.

They have a Functional download on their site (needs registration, but

they NEVER hassled me after sending me the unlock code).

It does work, from what I gathered it's a kind of filesystem driver that

encrypts in a special filesystem the image of the FAT directory of your

NT4/Win2k install.

Limitation in downloadable file is that it reboots after 20 minutes (which

by the way are often enough to do some check/recovery task).

Development seems to have STOPPED in early 2002 (No version for Xp and

it is claimed to work up to Win2k SP1 or SP2, cannot remember).

I think that something along the same lines, but using a "normal" disk image, would be of the greatest utility.

jaclaz

[Martin Zugec]

2XtremeMac: I wanted to post request I think it would be good to make utility, that will be able to make following steps from DOS:

1.) find MAC address from computer

2.) open file, find this MAC and insert associated computer name to variable

The point is useful for network installation, where U can associate PC name to machine from dos and modify unattend.txt

I am preparing my boot medium for network unattended installations and this could be great for me

[XtremeMaC]

@soulin doesn't getmac.exe work? but i could modify it and write it in unattend.txt.. simple.. but as there are many system builders i'm sure they've a nice app to do that, am i mistaken? try http://oem.microsoft.com ..

@jaclaz something simpler maybe, its a whole os code u're requesting, i'm not THAT advanced, if i use windows as base and try to make it bootable, than slack and temp files on operations have to be written to somewhere, maybe ram but for big operations your hdd have to be used, i dunno how bartpe/winpe manages that, but as u said its a loooong shot for me , crap that's a no, hmm what else?

[jaclaz]

Ok, a simpler one, then:

Have a look at these WACtools:

http://foxitsoftware.com/

http://foxitsoftware.com/wac/toolkit_intro.htm

They do almost anything is needed for Administration in something like 4 Mb.

A free version could be useful.

jaclaz

[Martin Zugec]

2XtremeMac: getmac works only if U receive IP address - for example if your mac is refused by DHCP, it will show U MAC address 00-00-00-00-00-00 Also there is problem in inserting the mac address to variable, so U can use it later

I can imagine it like this:

U run mac.exe - it will find your mac address and insert it to variable %macaddress%. Thats all I need - search and replace can be perform by another way

[jaclaz]

@soulin

Have a look here:

http://www.users.on.net/~driver/bootdisk/index.htm

http://www.users.on.net/~driver/bootdisk/about.htm

http://www.users.on.net/~driver/bootdisk/set2var.htm

And more precisely:

http://www.users.on.net/~driver/bootdisk/f...swer=1091698136

jaclaz

[Martin Zugec]

2jaclaz: THX, this is great! I programmed proprietary code for this, but this is more universal

[MCT]

if your still looking 4 something to do, i wouldnt mind a random logon screen utility, like

randlogon.exe "%windir%\resources\logonui\"

have it choose 1 from there?

[XtremeMaC]

bootxp does that..and i think style xp does that too.

http://www.bootxp.net/

anyways i'm postponing the idea, everything already exist..

[Incroyable HULK]

Just a little suggestion. It would be a great simple tool to have a small .exe which is able to scan our directory and prepare the text required for the OemPnPDriversPath for our winnt.sif

Please don't tell me to use a third party utility such as Nlite or whatever ... I am seeking a small self contained program.

Maybe it can be done with a batch file, I don't know. If this is the case I can offer to convert this batch file to a .exe with a custom icon and the Info of the creator

[rj_mayer]

Does anyone have a copy of the program set2var.exe that should be found on http://www.netbootdisk.com/set2var.htm? The link is dead. I have contacted the owner, Brad but he hasn't responded. If anyone can email me the file, I'd be most grateful! My address is rmayer@bottishamvc.org

[CoffeeFiend]

I'm thread digging! It's a somewhat old post, but an interesting one regardless.

Finding good/new ideas for software is always a bit of a challenge (doesn't matter if it's related to unattended installs or such). At least here you don't have to worry about if it's marketable (does it answer a need/create value/is there a viable market for it/does it create value/whatever...), so it's not that bad.

I've been thinking about a project for about a year or so. Nothing truly complicated, but I just can't seem to find time for it (so much to do yet so little time!) And also, I'm not sure how much people would have been really interested in it for various reasons.

My idea was an installer - yes, I know, there are already lots of them (too many perhaps). But they're all the same type: select what you want, and let it install... (or lots of people just don't use any menus and let it all install regardless). The big difference would have been, this one would take some specifics (like the asset tag #, user name, department or whatever) to determine what should be installed on that PC. Various departments use different line-of-business apps, different PCs come with different software bundled (a batch of dells may come with nero express 5.5, another PC batch may have Rixio instead; and they're often tied to hardware as well). Mainly for licensing purposes. I mean, you just can't install latest version of everything you like on every PC disregarding licensing (and fill the HDs with lots of unecessary stuff), nor make copies for every batch of PCs and departments (too time consuming).

It sounds like a rather simple thing to do. Until you really take time to to think about it. Some stuff is licensed per machine. Some other stuff is licensed to users (named users). And those users may work on more than one PC (use different workstations, and perhaps have a corporate laptop too). Or do you just assign/tie a user to a specific PC and install stuff on there only? Or what about shared PCs (many users sharing a few PCs)? Oh, and "x many concurrent users" licenses. And then there's CALs and everything else... And ideally you'd have this working along with a central database that would also keep track of licenses and all (and log everything and tons more things you could think of - auditing, asset tracking, you name it). This could get pretty large and complex eventually...

Since I've never really heard anyone ask for solutions like this before (not that I've bothered asking either), and that there are alternate solutions (SMS, GPO, scripts, etc) although often inferior, I've spend my energy and spare time on different projects. (This wouldn't really be useful for small shops and home users either, and would be especially irrelevant for those who completely disregard licensing altogether) I must say I'm more of a fan of centrally administering & remotely deploying stuff over network than sitting at a computer and doing it all by hand (select and wait for stuff to install on every PC? sorry, NOT gonna happen - life's too short, I'd rather push an install to hundreds of PCs in a few seconds instead)

Unrelated - it would also be nice to make some nice and useful utilities/script with something cool like PowerShell (monad) or Script.NET, but again, ideas are lacking... (Well, I have LOTS, but they're all rather large and time consuming projects, no small utilities). I'm not wasting time reinventing the wheel again - unless there would be a significant advantage to do things in a new/better way.

Anyhow. I think the problem about new ideas is that utilities have been created for just about any problem you could think of (handle registry, inf files, installers, script for everything, resource kits, you name it).

Vista will likely change things a bit when it comes to installs/deployments. Ximage, WDS instead of RIS... New installer altogether (WinPE-like versus WINNT32.exe from the command line). A lot of older utilities will become obsolete.