tazmaniandevil

I tried that to begin with, but at some point it seemed to be over-writing my settings. I tried adding them from a batch file using RunSynchronous too, and it was only partially successful. I suspect it's a permission thing.

I finally worked this one out through trial and error. It is not at all intuitive, and I have no idea how to do it any other way. Customise your desktop on a test account then run sysprep and boot into audit mode. Copy the appsFolder.itemdata-ms and appsFolderLayout.bin files from %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows to the system you develop your images on. Mount your install.wim file using DISM, and copy the 2 files into Users\default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Unmount the image. It's a PITA having to mount/unmount after each new addition to the desktop, but I guess this will become less frequent once we are all happy with the distribution image. If anyone knows of an easier method, please tell.

I'm not sure. AFAIK if you have a direct route to the internet at install, it should work. I only ever do WDS installs, so have never tried DU using any other method.

Setting <DynamicUpdate> <Enable>true</Enable> </DynamicUpdate> in the windowsPE pass of WDSClientUnattend will allow setup to download dynamic updates from Microsoft as long as there is no caching proxy in the path. We do have a web cache here, and dynamic updates still work fine. I assumed it was getting the updates from WSUS

Dunno about setup screens, but logon screen you need to edit %windir%\system32\imageres.dll using resourcehacker or similar. To change the 'Windows Orb' on the Windows property page to your own custom logo, you need to edit %windir%\Branding\Shellbrd\shellbrd.dll

Try /Y That's what I use to delete temp files etc. and it works for me.

Don't know whether this is related, but some of our Vista Business machines suffer from poor network performance. Downloads can be incredibly slow given we have a very fast connection here. I found a blog last week (Don't remember where - sorry) recommending running the following commands, which seems to have worked for our systems. netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled netsh interface tcp set global ecncapability=enabled I have now integrated this into our WDS distribution and all seems well. No more slow downloads.

The local admin account is disabled by default, but there is usually an option to create an account during install, which gets admin rights. Log on using .\<account name you created at setup> The .\ forces local logon.

Are you using a sata/ide-usb converter to connect the drive? I sometimes need to reboot the host system when using mine to be able to mount the volume. Is there an option in disk management to import foreign disk/volume?

Cheers midiboy, I got that sorted out via Microsoft but since applying the patch each time I try to integrate the updates the integrity check fails. "Echo %ERRORLEVEL%" returns 1359 I'm currently looking at an alternative, because integrating the updates on one machine then creating the answer file on another is just too much trouble. I won't go into any detail here in case it turns out to be another red herring. Microsoft have also announced that integrating SP1 is likely to corrupt the .wim image. What a crock this is turning out to be. Surely it would have been much better to create a Vista deployment mechanism for RIS instead of releasing this sub-standard mess which does not work anyplace near where the documentation claimed.

I can also integrate the updates using pkgmgr, following this guide. I find however that after doing so, and creating a new catalogue file in WSIM, I am unable to re-open or save my imageunattend.xml file. Whenever I try I get the following error. This does not only happen after integrating updates, but any time I make any changes to the install.wim, which is why I have avoided doing so.

Would it be feasible to copy the data to the first partition using $oem$ folders then run a script to move it during FirstLogonCommands in the oobeSystem pass? It really depends on the space available. edit: There is probably some way to point $oem$ at the second partition, but I have no idea how.

I don't particularly want to alter the install.wim source. I have tried this for copying files and settings etc. $oem$ style, but kept getting errors telling me the source was corrupt. I also find it an incredibly long winded way of doing things. As we only ever build machines here from RIS/WDS I find it much easier to follow the XP style convention of using the $oem$ folders - whether M$ recommend it or not. I feel M$ have lost a lot of good features from RIS in their rush to push WDS - and don't seem to be listening to their customers when we ask for these features back.

Just saw this topic while searching for something else. I load a custom Default profile so all users get the same settings etc. My method is prolly not supported by M$, but then most of what I do prolly isn't supported. I take the ntuser.dat from %Users%\Default on a Vista machine and load it in regedit. Highlight HKEY_USERS File --> Load Hive... Browse to the donor ntuser.dat and open. When prompted at Load Hive dialog, call it Default_User --> Click OK Open HKEY_USERS --> Default_User and add any HKCU settings you want to apply to all users. Unload hive --> Copy modified ntuser.dat file to $oem$\$1\Users\Default This modified ntuser.dat is copied to the hdd at build time, and all users logging on for the first time get these settings. Apologies if this has already been covered in another answer.

Make the change in WAIK in your wdsclientunattend.xml As for the guide, unless you want to create images with pre-installed apps etc. I wouldn't bother with much beyond the 'building an answer file' section. You will find all the info you need here. The biggest problem is knowing what to search for. If in doubt ask, if the answer has been posted already, someone will usually point you at the relavent thread. You don't normally get the unhelpful type answers you get on other forums where all they say is search. I find those kind of replys particularly off-puting. We all had to start somewhere after all.