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The Art of OEM - nLite & OEM Preinstallation


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141 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you like for Windows Designer Studio to perform most of the operations described in this guide?

    • Yes, and I want more features too!
      69
    • Yes
      13
    • No, I'd rather stick with the plain old Windows Setup routine.
      5
    • No, it's just a waste of time; nLite/vLite will always be enough for my needs.
      7
  2. 2. Now that this guide is complete, are you happy with its contents?

    • Yes, it's a great idea!
      63
    • Somewhat, I used some of the things described here.
      20
    • Probably, but it is too complex for me to handle.
      7
    • No
      4
  3. 3. Which of these should benefit you the most and you'd like to see first in Windows Designer Studio? (more details soon)

    • Windows Setup SDK (Panther Engine) - WIM capture, Setup customization and ISO making, like in Parts 3 and 4
      46
    • VKEY Explorer - an advanced tool to design the registry of the OS you are designing
      5
    • Package Designer - a set of diff and compression tools to allow you to author/create/add/remove windows components and preinstalled apps
      18
    • VM Workbench - an extension for the free VMware Player product to test the results of your work before finalizing
      10


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I've been getting quite close on a new approach of servicing drivers into images, by bypassing sysprep altogether and running the mini-setup manually. Unfortunately it's both tricky to perform manually (very complex procedure) and difficult to implement properly as code in my app. Hope to get a workable engineering sample soon, as I've overcome the "legal" aspects

I'll keep you posted.

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well isaid " i try it" and i do...

when i use sysprep its erros appear.

error to reseal.

error to update registry

what id o wrong?

sorry for my bad english

Btw, I have a better idea... :sneaky:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup]
"SetupType"=dword:00000001
"SystemSetupInProgress"=dword:00000001
"CmdLine"=hex(7):73,00,65,00,74,00,75,00,70,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,\
2d,00,6e,00,65,00,77,00,73,00,65,00,74,00,75,00,70,00,20,00,2d,00,6d,00,69,\
00,6e,00,69,00,00,00,00,00
"MiniSetupDoPnP"=dword:00000001
"MiniSetupInProgress"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager]
"SetupExecute"=hex(7):73,00,65,00,74,00,75,00,70,00,63,00,6c,00,2e,00,65,00,78,\
00,65,00,00,00,00,00

Skip sysprep altogether and apply this reg. It will get you back to mini-setup.

The nasty part was to discover "MiniSetupDoPnP"=dword:00000001 , which AFAIK is undocumented.

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This is the first time i have ever posted here after lurking for a couple years as a guest :)

I really enjoyed this guide and the rest of the msfn site, has given me a lot of great ideas on customizing my xp and 2003!.

I have been trying to sort out where the failure is for low memory systems on windows home server. Apparently, the WPE 2.0 environment WILL function without errors on 256 mb of ram, if you access a command prompt and create a pagefile on the hard drive, via wpeutil CreatePageFile <pagefile_name>, i had to edit winpeshl.ini and remove qs.exe and add cmd.exe in this file.

This remaining stuff i did was in Normal boot mode. did the rest in a full windows windows sbs install.

I unhid the whs optional components INF after i installed the whs component exe's and right click installed the whsoc.inf file. Then accessed cmd.exe again, then entered install.cmd from \files\install on the whs media then rebooted.

It appears qs.exe then exhibits strange behavior and bypasses the RAM check on the next reboot, the strange behavior is exhibited by using the bogus registry keys install.cmd entered, install.cmd made the assumption the media is on the drive you are booting from. The weird thing as well, that the media you called qs.exe from is now drive X: on reboot and your not even on PE!! and the install is hosed when i didnt do the previous steps before. i could NOT even logon.

I have a suspicion that whs is convertable if it can be figured out how to do this procedure without locking yourself out. or having strange drive assignments.

i would like to have otheres test this out on a non important installation.

It seems you need a good portion of the dvd directory structure and files in the root of the drive your attempting this on.

1). Unhide the windows components hidden in sysoc.inf, from your hard drive

2). install the inf from \windows\inf\whsoc.inf. from your hard drive.

3). Installed the whs components in \whs on your install media.

4). enter install.cmd from \files\install from your install media while in a normal windows session.

5). either reboot and allow the system to run qs.exe on next logon.

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  • 10 months later...

Ok, I have a WIM of my sysprepped XP, and I want to deploy it via CD/DVD. I've read through this guide a few times, and I'm confused by the stuff about using the Panther engine. I just want to deploy my WIM the same way Vista does, IE, pick language, partition, install.

Can anyone tell me what I should do?

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