I'm trying to figure out where exactly the $OEM$ directory is located.

Does it go into the root of the CD, or does it go under the i386 folder?

And once that's done, do you use %systemdrive%\<directory> in all batch files, or do you use %systemdrive%\$OEM$\$1\<directory ?

The guide is not very clear on this, and neither are the Microsoft KB articles, and help files.

the $OEM$ directory goes alongside the i386 directory, which should be in the root of your CD.

For example, on the root of your CD, it should contain 2 folders. (D: for this example is the CDRom)

D:\i386

D:\$OEM$

As for your second question.

The folders being named $OEM$\$1 indicates that all files within the $1 directory will be copied to %systemroot%\<whatever folders you have in the $1 directory>

If your $OEM$\$1 directory contains the folder "Cats" and file "dogs.txt" inside the cats folder "persian.txt", when you install from your CD it will be copied to %systemdrive% (which is usually C:)

Visual Layout:

\$OEM$\$1\dogs.txt

\$OEM$\$1\Cats

\$OEM$\$1\Cats\persian.txt

When you use your CD to install windows given the example above, your root C:\ would contain the following files

c:\dogs.txt

c:\Cats

c:\Cats\persian.txt

Hope this helps

http://www.MSFN.org/unattended/xp/finish.htm : make sure the $OEM$ directory is alongside the i386 directory, not in the i386 directory!

e.g.

C:\XPCD\i386\

C:\XPCD\$OEM$\

Not:

C:\XPCD\i386\$OEM$\

Looks clear to me, but umm.. I'll do screenshots if people are having trouble understanding that...

http://www.MSFN.org/unattended/xp/finish.htm : make sure the $OEM$ directory is alongside the i386 directory, not in the i386 directory!

e.g.

C:\XPCD\i386\

C:\XPCD\$OEM$\

Not:

C:\XPCD\i386\$OEM$\

Looks clear to me, but umm.. I'll do screenshots if people are having trouble understanding that...

Yes, that page is fine, however, earlier on in the guide, there is a contradicting quote.

http://www.MSFN.org/unattended/xp/batch_commands.htm < it mentions this: start /wait %systemdrive%\$OEM\$1\path\to\setup.exe /switches

Obviously, this is not the case. As it would be start /wait %systemdrive%\<path>\setup.exe

It would also appear that when I read the article, I didn't quite see it properly, so that was my mistake. However, thank you for claryifying that

One other thing.

When installing the hotfixes, I've noticed that they generate a lot of folders in the root location of the drive they were stored in (well, they did in my test run). Are there any switches that can tell the updater to remove those files? Or are they going to be placed within the %systemdrive%\install folder, and then I can remove them with an rmdir /Q /S ?