SetupReg.hiv

[JoDad]

I have been stepping through the excellent tutorial by Mark Melanson (AKA Jericho Jones) http://tjb.xgameservers.com/WindowsPE.html and have a question on the setupreg.hiv file. During the mkimg.cmd process this file is overwritten in the winpe and in the winpe_cdrom directories. I would expect the winpe_cdrom directory to be replaced as it recreates this total directory but why does the setupreg.hiv file in the source area get changed? The reason I am thinking this is that I load the hive in regedit and make a change. I then unload the hive. If I go back and reload the hive my changes are still there. When I run mkimg.cmd neither the destination directory nor the iso get the changes. When I load the setupreg.hiv file in regedit it has reset to original (at least my changes are gone)

I know I am supposed to edit the hive file in the cdrom build directory and then just create an image and this works, but, everytime I want to make a change at the source level I have to remember and redo everything I manually did at the destination level. I read through the mkimg.cmd file and it has one spot it pulls the setupreg.hiv file from the original cd. I am working with ISO's in virtualpc so just edited the xp2 iso and changed the hive file to the one I created. This still did not change the result. So my question becomes - where does the final setupreg.hiv file come from and why does the original on the winpe directory get changed? or if not changed then how do the alterations get removed?

Thanks

[Jazkal]

this is why I use a script to re-create my WinPE images. I am creating a GUI front end for it, once it's done, I'll release it.

Just create a batch file, or vbs script to handle it for you. That way if you need to edit things before the iso is created, your script can be modified to mount the reg hive, make the changes, then unload the hiv.

[JoDad]

I figured I'd have to do something along those lines. I am just kind of curious about where it pulls it from or if anyone knew why they would reset the source like that.

[Jazkal]

The mkimg.cmd creates a new hive each time it is run. So to make changes to the hive, you have to do after mkimg.cmd and before the iso is generated.

[JoDad]

The fact that it makes a new hive each time does explain why the file resets. I see where it pulls some inf files in but was hoping to find where I could set the initial changes so it would pull them in. Oh well, I'll turn my change log into a script to run whenever I need to run mkimg.cmd.

Thanks for the information.