Hidden Command Prompt During Windows Installation...

[Synapse]

just found this out on accident, not sure if it's been mentioned here before. (search didn't bring back any real results)

If you press Shift+F10 during the Graphical part of windows installation it will open a Command Prompt and you can do pretty much anything in it while windows is still installing.

*USB Drives seem to work as well... accidently had my 128mb USB stick in and typed "d:" and "dir" and got the contents of the drive....*

Possible uses:

- Dos command "Type" display a text document. so if you have a file with all the diffrent cd-keys you can display them... or even type one in if you have Product Key = * in winnt.sif (1 cd for multiple computers anyone?)

- Type D:\i386\winnt.sif (substitute "D:\" for the drive letter...)(display the contents of your winnt.sif incase you want to make sure you had a specific setting set)

- Should be able to play simple games such as minesweeper and solitare from a floppy (maybe off the hard drive as well...)

- access control panel items by using the commands here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192806/en-us (or change passwords with "control userpasswords2")

i'm sure theres more uses for this, but thats all i can really think of right now.

i know, kinda defeats the purpose of an "unattended" cd if you're sitting there playing in dos.. but i'm sure it will help out someone.

[Djé]

Good catch, indeed.

In fact, you can do much more than that:

* Just type 'notepad', and you can *EDIT* the files. (incidentally you can browse the computer using the 'open' box).

- Instead of looking at winnt.sif in your \I386, look at $WINNT$.INF in C:\WINDOWS\system32. There are the settings actually used by setup (it's too late to change things in winnt.sif). Now try to hack it!!

- As for changing the ProductID: I don't know about CD based install, but you need a valid one in winnt.sif prior to run winnt32.exe. So I have a valid 'generic' one in there, and a custom script to change it from T39, according to the machine spec (see the discussion about preactivation).

- The games on the HD, as well as all files are accessibles. I didn't try to run explorer yet (I suspect it doesn't work), but just using the 'open' dialog of notepad to reach the files (and then right click to open/run them) is working well.

* Also type 'regedit' and now you can do whatever you want with the registry. ... ... ... No don't do that!

* For sure, this trick is not enough advertised. I only discovered it in a buried message of this board.

It works as soon as setup runs (before T39).

* Extremely useful for debuging and understanding how setup works, for improving the unattended things.

* USB devices are also accessible as early as T39: I'm running scripts on USB drives from this point.

Very useful form customization: it runs the script only if the flash disk is plugged-in.

[NateSmith]

LOL..I browsed the internet while windows was installing graphical part of Windows Setup