Unattend - Removing Windows Components

[freemchr]

Hi Guys,

In the process of creating a full unattend for our XP SOE.

Have a few questions and hope you can help.

Question 1.

Within the unattend i want to be able to remove certain components within Windows during the install such as Windows Messenger, MSN Explorer, Outlook express etc.

I understand that you can put these under [components] within the winnt.sif but i am wondering is their any other means to remove them if already installed via scripting?

Question 2.

Also the SOE contains certain things like local group policy settings, customisation to the look and feel, and many different menu items and changes to the way the system operates such as log file settings, page file size etc.

I believe some of this is stored in the ntuser.dat but is all stored here? Do i need to run a utility like regsnap or advanced registry tracer to make these modifications and capture them to reg files, then run them after the unattend has completed?

Question 3.

What is the best method to copying the default user profile I have created to be the default profile within the unattend install? Should I just add the Documents and Settings folder to the $OEM$ directory to do so?

Question 4.

We have several models of PC's and hardware builds, do you know of any limitations to the amount of files/folders you can have under the $OEM$ drivers directory? and does the OEMPNP path search only the top level directory or go down to others within the drivers directory ie different model types of hardware?

Thanks so much for your help. It is greatly appreciated.

[Rahbas]

Question 1

I haven't had any luck removing components within Windows. My main gripe is Windows Media player. I have followed what I could and haven't had any luck. Perhaps someone can comment. The thread I'm refering to is here Here

Question 2

I may misunderstand your question but I do things like that with reg settings, at least for the HKEY_Local_Machine stuff.

Question 3

I've actually done this. There probably is a much easier way. Here's the code I used to pull it off.

ECHO.
ECHO Replacing Default Profile
ECHO Please wait...
RD /S /Q "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User"
MD "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User"
XCOPY /E /H /I /K /Q "%systemdrive%\install\Default User" "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User"
ATTRIB +H "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Application Data"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\NetHood"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Printhood"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Recent"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\SendTo"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Templates"
DEL "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Favorites\desktop.ini" /A
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Start Menu\desktop.ini"
ATTRIB +H /S /D "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\desktop.ini"
ECHO.

Question 4

I've got almost 300mb in my $oem$ directory thre drivers section alone is 69 meg. My OEMPNP path is rather large. It works just fine. Here's how long it is.

OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\IntelINF;Drivers\IDE_RAID;Drivers\audio;Drivers\display;Drivers\display2;Drivers\display\xp_inf;Drivers\display\xp_inf\B_08978;
Drivers\display\41.04;Drivers\modem;
Drivers\monitor;Drivers\network\BDCACT;
Drivers\network\pro100;Drivers\network\pro1000;Drivers\network\prow2100;
Drivers\network\BROADCOM;Drivers\ASF;Drivers\ibmpm\"

Had to adjust the OemPnPdrivers path because it would made browsing this thread painful.

I'm just getting into this so I hope none of my information was incorrect, but things are working like this for me.

[freemchr]

Doesnt though most visual settings get stored in the user's profile ie ntuser.dat

Thanks for the above info..