Oli Restorick said:
Oh, this just gets better and better. I'm past caring. I kicked up a bitGerry Hickman said:
I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....
My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.
This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?
This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?
Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time
Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?
Hi Johan,
Thanks for the links, see comments inline.
This does not appear to cover the case of the "bootable CD"? In fact,
official docs on this seem absent from Microsoft's site. The whole
concept of $OEM$ on a CD appears to be "unsupported", in fact there's
still an article on their site saying it can't be done, even though Oli
from this group has contacted them and asked for the article to be
corrected. Here's the article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234536
I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....
My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.
This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?
This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?
Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time
Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?
Johan Arwidmark said:This might be a bit out of the diskcussion, but I hope you find it
useful....
OEMs normally use Windows PE as the base platform for deployment and
then sysprep the image before sending the computer to the customer.
sysprep has features to include mass-storage device drivers while
sealing the customer computer.
If you have a Enterprise agreemment with Microsoft you also have
access to Windows PE 1.2 Corporate Edition
Windows PE can quite easy be updated with drivers for mass-storage
device drivers.
If you are into automating deployment (and have an enterprise
agreement) i very much recommend you to look into Windows PE.
Windows PE can be booted from a CD, HDD or over the Network (RIS)
regards
Johan Arwidmark
Windows User Group - Nordic
http://www.wug-nordic.net
Hi Johan,
Thanks for the links, see comments inline.
This does not appear to cover the case of the "bootable CD"? In fact,
official docs on this seem absent from Microsoft's site. The whole
concept of $OEM$ on a CD appears to be "unsupported", in fact there's
still an article on their site saying it can't be done, even though Oli
from this group has contacted them and asked for the article to be
corrected. Here's the article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234536
I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....
My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.
This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?
This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?
Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time
Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?
Oh, this just gets better and better. I'm past caring. I kicked up a bit
of a fuss and asked for the article to be clarified and/or corrected and
they pulled the article. Now it's back again and it is still wrong!
Typical
The clarification that's required is that when building a bootable CD, only
the GUI-mode setup $OEM$ functionality works. You can't use textmode
mass-storage drivers. The cmdlines.txt functionality works, as does the
rest of $oem$ functionality, like logos, etc.
I've seen several variations, all of varying complexity, but I'm hesitant to
use them because I want other people to be able to read and understand my
deployment methods.
Quite
Gerry -- will I be seeing you in Seattle?
Gerry Hickman said:
Oli said: