Noobies - Getting Started

[<SparTacuS>]

First let me say that I am not one of the experts. But in recent weeks I have noticed a lot of confused noobs getting a hard time because they are very uncertain about what they are doing. Now we all know that the various guides are excellent and yes I do know that they should search - but noobs are getting lost in the maze of different methods and projects - they are trying to do everything at once! The one thing that (IMHO) the various guides do not give is a simple outline of progression, an "Order of Operations" if you like. This is my attempt to help. No doubt others will add or criticize it - as they should - and it is not meant to be definitive.

Before You Begin: You must keep testing at each stage, use VPC or VMWare to protect your machine and use either ISO images or CDRW's - but test. Remember that failure is just as important as success in the learning process. When you need help you should

1. Read the guides

2. Use the search

3. If it’s not there you can ask on the Board.

Important Links The Guide Search MSFN

Step One: Slipstreaming & Updating.

Your first aim should probably be to take a vanilla XP installation CD and engineer it so that it includes all the updates, service packs and hotfixes that YOU require. It is tempting to go off at tangents with unattended applications, drivers, tweaks, cosmetics etc but until your base is right then you are almost certain to fail.

**TEST. TEST then TEST again.**

Step Two: Shrinking The Source

My next step is to reduce the size of the source produced above, either manually or using one of the methods found via this board.

NOTE: If you are using NLite then steps 1 & 2 can be done for you.

**TEST. TEST then TEST again.**

Step Three: Winnt.sif

Much of the simpler customisation and UA engineering is done from your setup file. Read the documentation and any examples you can find on the board and this is fairly straightforward.

**TEST. TEST then TEST again.**

Step Four: User/s & Logon

The instructions in the guide are very good for this and it will give you your first introduction to UA via cmdlines.txt. By this stage you should have a fairly slick, UA XP installation - just without applications, latest drivers etc.

**TEST. TEST then TEST again.**

Now you come to the point where you have to make a choice. Do you sort out UA drivers or applications first. It is personal choice dependant on what you are doing with your CD or which takes you longest to do manually. I find re-installation of apps more of a chore than drivers so that is MY next step.

Step Five: Applications

Again, the guide is excellent and the board of course helps a lot. Personally I use the RunOnceExe method, but by now you should know enough to make your own choice. Of course at this point testing does become a major chore since you really should try your build after each addition.

Step Six: Drivers

Pretty Much as Step 5, although driver integration is much less advanced at the moment than applications. My own choice at the moment is to place my drivers in the Install path so that they are “dumped” to the C: drive ready for quick installation once everything else is done.

Step 7: Cosmetics

I would place all the small and mainly trivial things under this description – setup screens, reg tweaks, window styles etc. The time to mess about with your build is when you KNOW that it is working. Otherwise you can undo a lot of work trying to fix something that ain’t broke.

Important Links The Guide Search MSFN

[Alanoll]

God, I REALLY need to finish the site

The new site has more of the progression you're speaking of. It's even divided into sections, progressively adding more to it.

Just onelittle criticism....

Shrinking source should NOT be touched by noobs. Perhaps closer to the point of Cosmetics or such. As by that time they have a grasp and they KNOW where it goes wrong.

[Cartoonite]

Very well said, <SparTacuS>. Can't say that I have much to add, except possibly several dozen more instances of

**TEST. TEST then TEST again.**

It really can't be overstated.

And make a note of every step you take along the way since your previous test. That way you know exactly what has changed in order to make isolating the cause of any problems easier.

Also, I do agree with Alanoll that shrinking the size of the source is probably not something novices should attempt. (I did it with mine with neither much experience nor much trouble, but I'm an id*** like that. )

God, I REALLY need to finish the site

Yes. Yes you do.

[MAVERICKS CHOICE]

Nice job Spartacus, but Alanolls right a new guide would be the ultimate.

[prathapml]

And that "ultimate" guide is coming soon.

Also, the comment about "shrinking source" is right. Too many people use nLite too soon and have no end of problems (atleast earlier people'd try to fix their errors themselves and report solutions).

[MAVERICKS CHOICE]

And that "ultimate" guide is coming soon.

Also, the comment about "shrinking source" is right. Too many people use nLite too soon and have no end of problems (atleast earlier people'd try to fix their errors themselves and report solutions).

Yes well NLite can be a very good tool but also a very dangerous one to the unwary. Heavens I know.

[Wraith]

God, I REALLY need to finish the site

You mean, I need to finish the site, right?

[<SparTacuS>]

Thanks for the comments folks.

Yea, I think your all right about the shrinking - I just jotted down my own order of ops.

I love Nlite - but I really think that folks should learn how to do stuff themselves first so that they understand what's going on. A bit like learning to do maths before buying a calculator.

[Girkers]

It is important to take notes between versions of you CDs/DVDs as you may fix something onetime and thus break something else.

I used a spreadsheet with this layout:

Program Problem Fix

This way I was able to keep track of what I was doing and if I needed to search for help I was easily able to refer to what had gone wrong. Also I could look back and see how much of an id*** I was when I couldn't spell a directory name properly in a path.

[Cartoonite]

Also I could look back and see how much of an id*** I was when I couldn't spell a directory name properly in a path. 

lol

If I had a dime for every typo-produced error I've had to troubleshoot in my projects I could retire. Batch files should come with a built-in spellcheck!

[<SparTacuS>]

ROTFL - my downfall isn't misspellings as such but forgotten quotes"".

An hour and a half test install screwed cos I missed one - a regular occurance.

[MaRsDeB]

Hi!

First reaction of a noob here... I would really like to TEST; TEST and TEST again... But I've got this problem with VMWare... I think the software has a problem with my RAID hardware, cus it says: "No system or disk error" It didn't work with pressing F6 on booting... it failed totally, also with my original XP cd.

Can someone solve this problem so I can test???

Thanx

[Cartoonite]

Can someone solve this problem so I can test???

Nope. But we can maybe help you solve it youself.

I doubt VMWare has a problem with your RAID setup. As far as I understand it, the virtual machine won't even see the RAID setup. All it will see is the hard drive file(s) that you have configured it to run on.

"No system or disk error"

It sounds to me like the virtual machine is trying to boot off the hard drive before you install anything on it. The hard drives created by programs like VMWare and VPC are created totally blank; they don't even have partitions on them yet. If you try to boot off of a partitionless hard drive, you are likely to get an error message like the one you are experiencing.

I suggest checking to make sure your VMWare machine is in fact mounting (loading) the CD or CD image that you want it to when it boots up. Open the Inventory screen for the virtual machine you want to test on, then double click the CD-ROM icon. I suggest using ISO images just because hard drives are much faster than CD-ROMs, but it's up to you. Select the image or the CD-ROM drive that you want the VPC to use, then make sure that the "Connect at power on" box is checked. Click OK to close out that dialogue box and you should be good to go. Power up the VPC and bask in the glow of a freshly booted Windows Setup.

If it still doesn't boot, I suggest checking into your virtual machine's BIOS to make sure that the boot sequence is correct to allow the box to boot off the CD-ROM.

Hope this fixes things up for you. Good luck, and welcome to MSFN.

[MaRsDeB]

Just checked it all... It was my floppy drive........ It booted from there, because there was a floppy in it....... And I indead hadn't check the power on dialoque... So thx for the tip!!!!

But now it seems that is doesn't respond to my winnt.sif at all on my DVDiso... So I'm just gonna keep noobing on for a while. Glad VMWare works anyway...

[Cartoonite]

I've seen people mention problems getting a uA (unattended) install working properly right from the get go because of the way they named their unattended file. If you haven't already, try renaming it to WINNT.SIF (make sure it is all in caps) and see if that fixes it. Also make sure that you've got it in the I386 folder where it is supposed to be.

No offense meant if I'm telling you something you already know, just spitting out all the ideas I can think of.

Keep posting back (although you may want to start a new thread to get more specific issues looked at) if you have any more problems.