Whats the record?

[Railman5]

Working on me unattended disk and was wondering....

whats the record out there for the longest unattended, no human hand intervention, for an install with as much operating system drivers and applications etc,as coud be installed

I bet there are some surprises

[rikgale]

Took 4 hours on my G/f's PII-400 with a 1.5Gb DVD based install. (170Mb nlited XP, Office 2003, Norton 2003 were the biggy's, and a bucket of other smaller stuff)

How long surely is gonna be bsaed on the machine speed, not on how much stuff you install. Surely you'd be better asking who has the biggest UA cd/dvd? Just an idea

Rik

[Railman5]

Yes your right.

Thats what I should have asked.

Who's got the largest unattended CD/DVD which does full install no intervention?

(or maybe whos unattended disk gets the furthest through - discounting speed as rikgale says, thats dependent on the hardware).

Thanks for the correction rikgale

[rikgale]

Ok, cool, well mine comes in at the moment at about 1.5Gb, althought it is shrinking. Gonna stop using office and move to OO, also gonna move away from Norton NIS, and start using Kerio and AVG7. Also creating self-extracting 7zip installs as well which knock a couple of Megs off of most things. A test on this come out at about ~590Mb, which certainly is not going to break and records

[JoeMSFN]

Took 4 hours on my ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you! Some of my clients don't realize now long a reinstall takes! However I usually don't uA the programs. Still for Windows by uA and apps by hand (expecially if Norton internet security/AV has to be updated ) it can take mucho time.

Oh yeah, I don't do apps, but I do "web essentials" stuff like java, .pdf reader(s), etc.

For me about an hour.

[MAVERICKS CHOICE]

Mines 1.90Gb compressed on disk & installs NLited xp, with ryans updates, All Bashrats driverpacks with approx fifty apps & my tweaks in just under an hour on my Dinosaur P4 2.53ghz box..

[war59312]

I'm up to about 8gb atm. Got it about as small as I can get it without lossing functionality. That is not using nlite. At least not much. Just a few things i dont care for, like wall papers and screen savers.

Then again this ones for work and installs over 200 applications atm inlucuding office. A lot of its templates for Adobe Photoshop though.

[Alanoll]

I'm at about....4.2 GB on my personal disc. Takes just about 1.25 hours to fully complete. Nothing remove via nLite, everything by hand (small thigns like Messenger and such) so it's still a so called "bloated" windows, though i minimize the footprint in other ways withotu risking loosing functionality. I install Office 2003, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, Acrobat Pro 7.0, Dreamweaver MX 2004, Firefox MX 2004 amongst others.

I use my disc like i would an image. When my computer gets too unstanble from all the tampering i do to it, i just start from a "restore point".

[Wraith]

Firefox MX 2004 eh?

Interesting.

[Alanoll]

Firefox MX 2004 eh?

Interesting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Fireworks....my bad

[Martin Zugec]

Maybe I am the recordman

78GB UA for one company. Absolutely unattended.

Every 1st of the month all of their computers are reinstalled.

1.) Every PC is set to online (Ping + WOL if negative).

2.) User profiles are migrated to network.

3.) PCs are reinstalled using PXE small-boot mediums (700kB)

4.) Base applications (Office etc.) are installed

5.) Special applications are installed based on user membership (Account etc.)

6.) More special applications are installed This is based on connected HW devices, e.g. if he got Scanner, special software is installed or if he got cd burner Nero is installed

7.) EVEN more special applications are installed It is something similar to Publishing, however it will remember user selection

8.) User profiles are returned to computer

and few other things are applied....

Because they have only one server for this purposes, it is rock-stable, so in slow speed every computer is generating its own software library and SW is installed from local HDD. That is why this installation is about 6-8 hours long.

I implemented "standalone" installation also there, it is much faster (2 hours)...

[S1LV3RF1$#]

Currently working on one. With a chopped version of XP Pro via nLite, About 12 Reg Tweaks, Secedit configuration, Folder generation, Custom Per User .lnk Generation, 36 applications to include Office 2003, Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, Rcas Framework V10, DiskKeeper V7.... and So on. Currently working on:

A way to set folder Security... Think there is a command line app in Rescource kit.

A Way to Create Shares... No ideas on this yet.

Also, I Am trying to find a way to clear the Event logs from command line.

Oh Yeah, The Install Image is currently at 1.9 GB and growing.

[Martin Zugec]

For setting ACL: commands cacls, xcacls or (professional) subinacl

For creating shares: net share

For clearing event log:

sTarget = WScript.Arguments(0)  'First command-line arg to script.
sLog = WScript.Arguments(1)     'Second command-line arg to script.

If ClearEventLog(sTarget, sLog) Then                    'Function returns true if operation successful.
    WScript.Echo sLog & " log cleared on " & sTarget
Else
    WScript.Echo sLog & " log NOT cleared on " & sTarget
End If

Function ClearEventLog(sComputer, sLogName)
    On Error Resume Next
    Set oWMI = GetObject("WinMgmts:{(Security)}!//" & sComputer & "/root/cimv2")
    Set cLogFile = oWMI.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_NTEventLogFile WHERE 
LogFileName = " & "'" & sLogName & "'")
    For Each oLog In cLogFile
        iError = oLog.ClearEventlog()
    Next
    If iError = 0 And Err.Number = 0 Then ClearEventLog = True Else ClearEventLog = False
End Function

[Martin Zugec]

or use wmic nteventlog class if you dont want to create vbs...

[S1LV3RF1$#]

Thanks Martin ... That helps a lot.