My try with nlite 1.2rc

[shodan]

Hi,

I just decided to give a try install windows with nLite 1.2 RC and "Windows 2003 R2 64bit Enterprise VOL Edition"

nlite recognize my cd as Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition service pack 1 build 1830 size 423.46

please refer to attached Last Session.ini file for my nlite settings

a little bit about my box

it's using a MSI K9N Platinum SLI (nForce 570-based)

I have 2 300gb hdd in strip raid 0

at time of install there was a usb mass storage device accidentally plugged in that might have been the cause of one of my problems (it was detected by the installer as the 2nd drive)

my hdd has a single ntfs partition

I will start with the minor glitches and keep the big (possibly probably a windows bug and not an nlite one anyway, but it should be documented anyways)

ok

when I finished the install it asked for cd2 to finish the install , I have it some where but I did want to go get it right away so I hit cancel, I'm not sure what on there but it's probably crap I don't need anyway, is there a way to remove that dialog ?

next I noticed moving windows was in "wireframe" mode so I set "Show window contents while dragging" to on (it was off)

that is strange because I have in my ini file "Visual Effects-Show window contents while dragging-Enable"

when I right-clicked "My Computer" the software menuitem was missing even though

My Computer-Add Software to Context Menu

was in my inifile (this used to work with nlite1+windows2k3-x64 r1)

this last problem is probably pebkac but I can't find where to remove "Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration" , I can't find it in the "Components" step , I may be going blind ! but I can swear it used to be in there ?!? somewhere ....

ok I had also minor tweaks but these have never been part of nlite , their just little annoyances that may not be fixable with nlite anyway

when I open a folder for the first time I right-click the toolbar and I set -> Customize... -> Text options -> No text labels

after that I click in the folder window View -> List (the default is details for my computers but list for other folders) then I click tools -> Folder Options -> View (tab) -> "Apply to all folders", next I uncheck "Remember each folder's view settings" and click ok

(I know there is in Tweaks -> Change Explorer Folder View to: Details) but there's isn't one for "List" also it doesn't apply to all folders and it doesn't uncheck "Remember each folder's view settings"

I also uncheck "Display Simple folder view in explorer's folder list" out of habit but I'm not even sure what it does.. probably something I don't like

finally (before the big one)

I go to Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Troubleshoot -> and I move the "Hardware Acceleration" to Full

this has been a weird problem on my old nlite1+win2k3 installs , if you install nvidia driver's this slider will reset to it's default settings , and sometime it will spontaneously reset to default when you change other things video card related, this is probably nvidia's fault (also if you disable the nvidia tray icon it will sometime come back without reason , it will also come back if you reinstall the driver or change some settings ,maybe even when you install a game !) I'm quite sure it's nvidia screwing up

ok now the big one

a little backstory first

not being content with having 4 more directories with space in their names on my root I decided to change my targetpath, profiledir, programfilesdir and programfilesdir(x86)

programfilesdir=c:\usr

programfilesdir(x86)=c:\usr\x86

targetpath=\usr\windows

profilesdir=%systemroot%\home

this was when I installed back in january with nlite1+win2k3x64

I had lots of troubles with my previous file hierarchy

I had documented the problems in this previous thread http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61978&hl=

but it was somewhat incomplete because I hadn't seen all the troubles yet

with this previous install, some application installer went nuts (for example sun java jre, acrobat reader 7, the game "call of juarez", Active Perl)

the most common theme of failure was that when I first tried to install it would suggest a path like

c:\usr\x86\x86\x86\x86\Sun\Java\JRE1.5.0.02

then I'd correct the path manually "C:\usr\x86\Java"

but instead it would end up putting files everywhere !

c:\usr\x86\Java\

c:\usr\x86\x86\Common Files\Java...

c:\usr\x86\x86\x86\Sun\....

c:\usr\x86\x86\x86\x86\x86\x86\Common Files\Java

c:\usr\x86\x86\x86\x86\x86\x86\Sun\...

and more often that not the installer would end up failing completly

sometime I could get a working install by pointing it to c:\home\java

but some installer (like vmware workstation) completely failed silently

or other (like BlueMSX) would just make their links to the wrong destination but otherwise sort of work

so this time I changed my file hierarchy a little bit to be a little cleaner

programfilesdir=c:\system\programs

programfilesdir(x86)=c:\system\programs-x86

targetpath=c:\system\programs\windows

profilesdir=%systemroot%\system\home

first, nlite 1.2rc doesn't provide a way to set programfilesdir(x86) so for now I only set programfilesdir and nlite used the default of c:\system\programs(x86)

I installed windows , I had a weird problem that is probably caused by me accidentally leaving a usb mass storage device plugged in during the install (documented here http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...659&st=315)

once the install was done I had the following directory

c:\system\programs

c:\system\programs(x86)

c:\system\programs\windows <== properly containing windows

c:\system\home <== properly containing user profiles

but also I had

C:\Program Files

C:\Program Files (x86)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Uninstall Information <= empty directory

C:\Program Files (x86)(x86)

C:\Program Files (x86)(x86)\Common Files\ODBC\Data Sources <= empty directory

a registery search for the string "Program Files" returned the following erroneous entries

(refer to attached file "incorrect_programfiles_entries.reg")

erroneous entries are of 3 kinds

shell extensions

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\wrifile\shell\printto\command]

@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows NT\\Accessories\\WORDPAD.EXE\" /pt \"%1\" \"%2\" \"%3\" \"%4\""

uninstall information related

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Advanced INF Setup\IE40.Comctl32]

"BackupFileName"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Uninstall Information\\IE40.Comctl32\\IE40.Comctl32.DAT"

"BackupPath"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Uninstall Information\\IE40.Comctl32"

and these two oddballs

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]

"PathName"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\WINDOWS"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ODBC\ODBC.INI\ODBC File DSN]

"DefaultDSNDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)(x86)\\Common Files\\ODBC\\Data Sources"

since the c:\Program Files* are all empty I will delete them and see if trouble happens, or if they get re-created by windows or some installer

I installed Sun Java JRE 1.5* who was notoriously f'ed up with my previous install and to my surprised it installed to C:\SYSTEM\programs(x86)\Java\jre1.5.0_07

so all in all this -might- not be as much a problem as is was under the condition that programfilesdir(x86) isn't a sub-directory of programfilesdir , but there still is a bug somewhere, I do not believe this is a bug with nlite , but I think that nlite could compensate and fix the problem anyways (searching and correcting erroneous path in the registery and deleting c:\Program Files* if they are empty)

this is all for tonight I'll try to follow up on this tomorrow

bye !

LAST_SESSION.INI

incorrect_programfiles_entries.reg

corrected_programfiles_entries.reg