The Art of OEM - nLite & OEM Preinstallation

[nuhi]

Topic moved to a better suited subforum.

[NaDer_GenKO]

Hi 'dexter'

I have Windows XP Pro.

How can this tutorial be useful for me? if yes

What steps should i follow?

Edited July 6, 2007 by NaDer_GenKO

[dexter.inside]

Hi 'dexter'

I have Windows XP Pro.

How can this tutorial be useful for me? if yes

What steps should i follow?

the main benefit for workstations is that you can slipstream large pieces of software in your windows installation, like Visual Studio or Office 2007.

Parts 1, 3 and 4 are applicable in this case, the main difference is that you just install the software you want in VMware and sysprep afterwards. I will make a Part 2 alternative for Windows 2000 / XP

[ewood]

Thanks dexter.inside!!!

[dexter.inside]

Yo dexter.inside, I like your post. Just an idea, you have to make a blog or website with all this content.

And thus...

HTML version on my website here (I will add PDF version to a download section)

Windows Designer Studio topic here (concerning app development, suggestions and feedback)

This thread stays as discussion for the guide itself. There will be a different topic for Art of OEM for Vista.

To get the newsletter, send a mail with the word 'subscribe' in subject, to dexter_inside@yahoo.com

Edited July 6, 2007 by dexter.inside

[NaDer_GenKO]

Hi dexter,

the links of part2 ,3 and 4 on Art of OEM web site not working

I tested it for 3 days before and nothing changed. I'm Very sad Because I'm interesting in this scenario

[dexter.inside]

Hi dexter,

the links of part2 ,3 and 4 on Art of OEM web site not working

I tested it for 3 days before and nothing changed. I'm Very sad Because I'm interesting in this scenario

sorry for that, I have made some minor adjustments to the text and moved all the images on my site. I am also making some space in Part 2 for a workstation-tuned scenario.

Edit: done, all the parts are now on my site. Issues specific to WHS are moved out from Part 2 for the moment, hope that clears out some of the confusions related to 2.2 - 2.4

PDF version: Art of OEM - revision 2.pdf , 6189 kb

Edited July 9, 2007 by dexter.inside

[NaDer_GenKO]

thank you very much dexter

for your fast response and for the great job and for your efforts

the site now working perfectly and I'm happy of this

the PDF is very nice

[wrayal]

dexter,

I've been following the process, and I'm very impressed by not only your research, but also the detail in your guide! I had two little problems whilst following it though:

1) You have an absolute mountain of drivers; I realised not all of these are required, but as a general rule, will the mass storage drivers distributed with windows be sufficient for install on most computers, if you add them correctly into sysprep?

2) I was unsure how to transfer the settings across to the default user. I've created a second user, and installed everything I wish under that user, but how do I now transfer the settings to the default user? And do I need to do anything to the admin account? This is immediately before sysprep.

Many thanks!!

Wrayal

[dexter.inside]

1) You have an absolute mountain of drivers; I realised not all of these are required, but as a general rule, will the mass storage drivers distributed with windows be sufficient for install on most computers, if you add them correctly into sysprep?

The only real issue with missing drivers is that if you don't have the proper SATA drivers you won't be able to install windows (either Windows PE will not detect the hard drive at all, or Windows will BSoD with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME at first boot). If you use the Universal ATA driver you may overcome that problem, though.

2) I was unsure how to transfer the settings across to the default user. I've created a second user, and installed everything I wish under that user, but how do I now transfer the settings to the default user? And do I need to do anything to the admin account? This is immediately before sysprep.

The default user data is in \Documents and Settings\Default User. If you already have the template user account, copy it over the Default User folder, overwriting files there. This is done after you've applied sysprep, and you are preparing to image it. Alternatively, there's the TweakUI Powertoy, that can do mostly the same thing. It's best to use TweakUI just before running sysprep.

If you want the administrator account disabled, you should run a script at first boot to disable it.

[wrayal]

Awesome, thanks. I've done this now, and am preparing to reseal tomorrow, but must first find my longhorn 4xxx disk. Many thanks again for the guide, I'll report my results here as I go along - so far almost everything has worked smoothly. I've integrated Media Centre and Tablet tools successfully, tho I had to stop the MCE receiver service to prevent an event warning on startup [i don't use the features it provides anyway], and it still always gives a note saying a media centre extender is connected every time I shut down, even though I don't - I must look into the latter before sealing I suspect. Have you come across this at all?

The only other issue I had was that where BDD put all my drivers into a single folder, nLit only recognised one of those within this folder. I ended up manually putting them into separate folders (thankfully I didn't have nearly as many drivers as you!). Is this stupidity on my part?

Thanks,

Wrayal

[edit] Sorry, one final question, if I may: I saw you did the 'Ultimate' modification to 2k3 - did you also have the error stating you drivers were incompatible, and does this rectify itself once installed on hardware for which you can provide valid drivers?

Edited July 13, 2007 by wrayal

[dexter.inside]

nLite has no problem reading \Out-of-box Drivers as a Multiple Driver Folder. You've probably used the other option.

MCE adds some stuff to startup, like cheching for extenders. I had no driver issues whatsoever on it.

[NetworkService]

Hi all,

I have followed this guide, and am now testing my BartPE + Longhorn Setup ISO. The setup did get to the partition choice in my Server 2003 desktop, but, on the BartPE CD, it drops to the command shell of startnet.cmd, after I select the partition selection button, or Next. I did use an modified Longhorn setup, as I could not get an untouched one, but the only change is that there is no dotnetpe.cab, and there is a weird bitmap in the loading screen. Also, I'm deploying XP Pro, but the setup only wanted to run on 2003, so I built it with 2003.

Could anyone help?

-- Bas

[dexter.inside]

Hi all,

I have followed this guide, and am now testing my BartPE + Longhorn Setup ISO. The setup did get to the partition choice in my Server 2003 desktop, but, on the BartPE CD, it drops to the command shell of startnet.cmd, after I select the partition selection button, or Next. I did use an modified Longhorn setup, as I could not get an untouched one, but the only change is that there is no dotnetpe.cab, and there is a weird bitmap in the loading screen. Also, I'm deploying XP Pro, but the setup only wanted to run on 2003, so I built it with 2003.

Could anyone help?

-- Bas

Probably because the Panther Setup engine uses ramdrive internally and the ramdrive.sys in XP is no good.

If there are missing dependencies, the setup routine just closes silently.

Have a look at Norton Ghost 12 rescue CD, it already has all the dependencies needed for this. I am currently writing an alternate scenario for Windows XP, in which the setup is launched from Symantec SRESHELL.

I've added the Panther SDKs on my project's download page

You will have to provide PIDGEN.DLL, SETUPP.INI and EULA.TXT for the OS you are installing.

Edited July 14, 2007 by dexter.inside

[NetworkService]

Hmm, after re-checking the dependencies, also copying them to the sources folder, running depends again to make sure nothing's wrong (only missing is MSJAVA.dll), the setup still dies. Also downloaded the clean setup from sourceforge.net, but it still did not work... :/

What could be the problem?

-- Bas