Pre Guide

[lurk&jerk]

I've been plugging away at WPI for a month now and really like the flexibility of the post install method of setting up Windows. A side benefit of this program is that it really helps you get organized about your installations and weed out crap you don't need and focus on the stuff you do as well as make installations more consistent from machine to machine if you have a home or small office network.

Just thought I'd share some of my findings in the hope that they might benefit others:

1. The %CDROM% path designation was giving me fits since on my machine Windows could never find WPI.hta on a mobile or USB drive. I switched to using %wpipath% (as discussed here and haven't had any problems since.

2. Intitially, after using nLite to issue a runonce command to start WPI.hta after a Windows install, WPI.hta wouldn't launch. I solved the problem by inserting a pause (or hit any key command) before WPI.hta is launched. Now it works just fine.

3. In the WPI\INSTALL folder, I use silent switches on a single executable file or let my favorite compression utility do the heavy lifting of copying files and making registration entries by bundeling it all up in an SFX file. (I do this with even big apps like Microsoft Office and Acrobat and it works). I don't use nested installation folders with "setup.exe" and a bunch of files within the WPI install folder because WPI will sometimes get confused.

4. The executables of some apps have a lot of flab in them and make your installation DVD larger than it needs to be. Always right-click on the installation file with your zip program and see if the files can be extracted. When I did this with the program DVD Copy 4, for example, I found the executable added nearly 25MB of additional code by bundling QuickTime, GoogleToolBar and GoogleDeskTop Search in the setup file. To make this easier, download the executable identifier PEid as well as the universal silent switch finder . Put a shortcut to USSF.exe in your sendto folder and right-click on any executable to determine what installer was used in the setup program. it will show you the switches that will make the setup install automatically.

5. Since it is so useful for running scripts, I usually bundle AutoIt directly into the initial Windows install with nlite. Then, the first post install app I setup is an uninstaller program so it can track all the setups reliably and remove anything that went astray or that I subsequently don't want. I also use the uninstaller on apps like Crap Cleaner to remove any 3rd party apps that are automatically installed when you run a silent setup. For instance after Crap Cleaner I run a script that invokes the uninstallation program to remove the yahoo toolbar.

5. Finally, I make an all-in-one switchless installer for my custom tweaks and small utilities. I usually copy at least the following registry keys:

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer (for file settings like hide/show attributes, etc. Icon Layout)

2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ComDlg32\PlacesBar

3. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID (for custom namespaces and icons, i.e. "Trash" instead of "Recycle Bin"; "My PC" instead of "My Computer".

4. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\IntelliPoint (for intellimouse settings)

go here to get info on how to make a silent intellimouse setup.

5. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

(I move all my shell folders DESKTOP, WEB HISTORY, FAVORITES AND DOCUMENTS FOLDER to a seperate data partition on my hard drive; this is the registry key where you set the paths; you can also use TweakUI to set the paths but you need to copy the resulting registry changes to a file)

6. I use the Maxthon browser instead of Internet Explorer because customizing it is a snap. Just set the browser up like you want and copy the config.ini file to the \Program Files\Maxthon\Config folder during post install.

I use the "Ultimate" WPI theme, which is very nice except for the smallish exit button, which I made larger. Here's a pix . of some of my WIP directory structure and here is my config.js file.config.js. Here is a screen shot of the embedded commands for my tweaks SFX file. . Newbies, please remember the scripts are just guides and not meant for copying and pasting. Your apps would have to match to same paths and files names as the ones in my file in order for them to run correctly. That's all for now....

Edited July 31, 2006 by lurk&jerk