Hey everyone,

Thought I'd start a little list on all the gotcha's I've encountered when playing with Vista right now...

Distribution share -- What the heck are these? Configuration sets with a different name?

It seems that distribution share are a complete waste of a name. Just because you have the Distribution share mapped up in your Windows System Imaging tool doesn't mean ANYTHING! Nothing is copied over -- ever. All it seems to do it create a folder structure -- Whoop dee doo!

Yeah, you can right click and add drivers, and they do appear to be added to the distribution share, I haven't had success in getting anything copied over via the $OEM$ folders folder.

In order for $OEM$ to be copied from the "distribution" share, it appears you need the AutoUnattend.xml to reside in the root of that folder...

Like so:

$OEM$ folders
		   |-$OEM$
		   |-$$
packages
Autounattend.xml

The WinPE Disk Configuration section is extremely finicky. If the disk isn't setup EXACTLY in a manner that it can execute all of it's commands, it throws up an error and fails as opposed to continuing. This is a PITA when extending partitions, formating different partitions, etc.

Either you'll need a way to detect how a disk is setup beforehand, ensure a disk is setup in an exact configuration all the time, etc.

Naturally, I may be different than everyone else because I do all my installs from "scratch" not the Microsoft recommended, install, configure, backup to an image, redeploy image, tweak, etc.

It appears the $OEM$ folders that is created by the distribution share is incorrect! You need to rename it to $oem$ for it to be correctly placed on the destination system....

Edited January 30, 200719 yr by Metzen

It appears the majority of the WindowsPE stage refers to starting off a full DVD with an answer file... Starting off an actual Windows PE CD starts you at "Phase 2" and lots of the options for the WinPE stage does not work (running Synchronous commands, setting a log file, etc.)

Poor to call it WindowsPE stage...

FixNTFS is now called BOOTSECT.exe and is found in the BOOT folder of the Windows Vista DVD.

*Themes won't set the background through OOBE because OOBE prompts you for one.

*My Network Places and My Documents folders won't apply custom icons even if specified in a theme file

*You can registry hack the icons above but then the icons won't change even when switching back to standard Windows themes. The only way to change them back is to go to where you can manually change the icon and "Restore Default".