Hello there I was just wondering if anyone new where the start menu\programs folders installation file was in the xp src.

is it inf or ini ?

Not sure what youre talking about... are you simply trying to change particular settings of your start menu during unattended install? if so you need to look into reg tweaks... most of which are covered in the reg tweak sticky

I'm not sure what's being asked here either. I see it as a two part question: How are those folders created during installation, and how are the initial settings created. I can only answer the second part. There are several inf files in the i386 folder which contain all the initial registry settings. Search for hive*.inf. I'm aware that file contents can be changed by the registry (odbc.ini, for example), but I'm not sure if the folders can be created by writing something to the registry or if setup has to mkdir them or somesuch.

At one time it occured to me that it would be a trivial matter (though time consuming for someone at my skill level) to write a script to alter the hive.inf files using .reg tweak files. That sort of thing can easily be done with perl, but I abandoned the idea because I see more disadvantages to doing it that way than advantages. Though it might make a nice plugin for one of the OSS RIS projects.