Tomalak Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Hello all,just got a new notebook - there are no recovery CDs provided but there is a full i386 directory on the hard disk, so I decided to create full installation CD myself from that source.The problem is: the vendor apparently already included some patches and corrections. The directory contains a lot of dll's and other files that seem to have been added by slipstreaming. The svcpack subdirectory also is filled with additional executables.My question is now, before spending days of testing: how to deal with that, how to deal with an unclean source? Should I let hfslip just do its work and slipstream all updates, possibly overwriting some of the already integrated files? What about outdated patches that are not removed this way? Which problems do I have to expect, and how to possibly circumvent them?Or should I just remove the svcpack subdirectory and try to clean my source this way? But then what about still existing but invalid references (to be found in files in the i386 directory) to these deleted files? And additionally, how to detect which files in the i386 folder itself have been changed compared to a fresh SP2 installation source?Thanks for hints and good suggestions before tackling this!Regards,Tomalak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super-Magician Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 I don't think there is one best way to go about this. HFSLIP only supports clean sources, but that doesn't mean you can't try it with others.Since your source already has a SVCPACK folder, it has entries in SVCPACK.INF already. HFSLIP cannot deal with this. Instead, it will create a completely new SVCPACK.INF file, as far as I can remember, and overwrite any that you might already have.If some updates are slipstreamed as well, as is the case with many OEM installations, there will at any rate already be information contained in TXTSETUP.SIF and DOSNET.INF. If you don't slipstream any updates that the CD already has, things should be fine. But you never know.I'm sure TommyP and Tomcat76 can give a much more thorough answer to your situation. This is just my take on it. You mentioned that you wanted to determine which files are changed from a fresh copy of SP2. If I can, I'll try to compile a list of MD5s from an unmodified retail source directly from MS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tommyp Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 I have a feeling that you will run into problems with that folder, but you are more than welcome to test the waters and report back. You should call your vendor up and request an installation cd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glentium Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 may i ask what is your notebook brand? if it's a thinkpad, i might be able to assist you. most notebooks that do not provide recovery discs does have a recovery partition which is accessible by their own software. from that software, you should find it in All Programs, you can create recovery discs yourself... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super-Magician Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 That is true, glentium. For example, all new HP and Sony computers (to name a few) no longer come with pre-prepared recovery discs. They make you burn them yourself. Usually there is a dedicated recovery partition with all the necessary files, but you can't use the files unless you run the program that comes along with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiki Burgh Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 even Dell notebooks have that tool too & SRCD (system recovery cd) is always ready for burning that is why they do not send out the OS cds anymore ... we all know that HFSLIP needs to work on a clean source but it is well worth giving it a shot since basically OEM cds that some of us have already tried can be handled by HFSLIP ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomalak Posted January 17, 2007 Author Share Posted January 17, 2007 may i ask what is your notebook brand? if it's a thinkpad, i might be able to assist you. most notebooks that do not provide recovery discs does have a recovery partition which is accessible by their own software. from that software, you should find it in All Programs, you can create recovery discs yourself...Yes, it's a Thinkpad (Lenovo). I know about the recovery partition and their "Rescue & Recovery" software, but that will only reset the computer to the initial status it had on delivery (only one usable partition, lots of crap software installed, not up-to-date).Didn't try to create and explore the recovery discs yet, as I thought those will just give me the same options I have as when booting into the recovery partition. My guess is that I will not get a useful Windows installation CD this way - at least not a better one as with copying the i386 directory from the harddisk and creating one myself. Other experiences?Will spend some time for this issue on the coming weekend. Is my assumption correct that I can also use an old but clean CD and just use the product key from the "unattend.txt" of the new notebook? Will this work (using the OEM key which doesn't require activation as opposed to the one which is printed on the label on the bottom of the laptop)? Maybe this would be the easiest solution, but being curious I will also try the direct approach (removing svcpack and see what happens when hfslip runs)...Thanks for your help so far,Tomalak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glentium Posted January 18, 2007 Share Posted January 18, 2007 using an old but clean CD and the product key from the unattend.txt might work, but I believe the I386 provided is optimize for thinkpads as to drivers (and perhaps, other things as well) are concerned. I tried using it on a hp Desktop and I got some errors as to missing drivers. the recovery discs would be of no value to you as to using HFSLIP is concerned because it only contains compressed recovery image to be restored, as plain Windows XP SP2. All thinkpad customizations and patch/hotfix installations are done during the rest of the recovery process.so, I'm 100% sure the I386 directory on my thinkpad (T60) is clean SP2-slipstreamed source. That is what I used for HFSLIP. It didn't even have a SVCPACK folder. All files in I386 are dated 8/4/2004 except for OEMBIOS.*, unattend.txt and winbios.txt. Is it brand new notebook? Maybe somebody already messed up with your source. To be sure, you might want to print the directory structure of your I386 folder from the command-prompt: type "DIR C:\I386 /S > i386.txt" and post your i386.txt. I will compare it to mine. Now, to be really, really sure, run the Product Recovery from the Recovery Partition to restore it to factory settings. You should then have a clean I386 folder. after that, I suggest making a set of product recovery discs as a precaution (but always use the Recovery Partion not the discs to restore). also a simple folder backup of a freshly restored C: drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomalak Posted January 23, 2007 Author Share Posted January 23, 2007 (edited) Hello all,short update as an information for others trying to use a recovery installation to make an installation CD. I was able to create a working installation CD this weekend, so here are my findings (specifically for Lenovo Thinkpads):1. Just deleting the svcpack directory and the svcpack.inf file is not enough. Installation went fine during textmode and GUI setup without any complaints (no missing files etc.), but after booting into the fresh installed system I found a lot of updates missing although they have been included in the hfslip run.The additional files still present in the i386 directory and the references in dosnet.inf to the files within the removed svcpack folder obviously interfered with the slipstream activities of hfslip.2. Deleting all these superfluous files was the way to go. They can be recognized by not being spelled in uppercase letters (about 100 files in my case). I verified this by comparing against another WinXP Pro CD with just SP2 slipstreamed, the number of files being identical now.References to those files and the svcpack directory had to be removed from the dosnet.inf file. No more modifications necessary, and no other files had to be changed (I removed unattend.txt, but this doesn't count).3. The OS identification files (WIN51, WIN51IP and WIN51IP.SP2) could be found within the i386 folder. They had to be moved one level up. The other files normally present in the root directory (setup.exe, the readmes, etc.) had to be copied from another CD, they were not on the harddisk after the installation. But they are not absolutely necessary.4. Other differences compared with the contents of the other CD were about 6-8 updated files (telnet.exe, eula.txt, ...) and of course the four oembios.* files (needed for the Windows key to be accepted). I didn't care about them and used them as they were, no problems here.Using the resulting file set as input for hfslip and burning a CD from it gave me a working installation CD with the setup itself working smoothly (no errors, no messages), and a fully patched system afterwards. Other things I noticed are not related to this and I will report them in other, more appropriate threads. Thanks for reading so far...HTH,Tomalak Edited January 23, 2007 by Tomalak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super-Magician Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 Thanks for your complete and thorough report. I'm sure they will be of much help to others in need of solving this particular issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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