Ok I really disliked the fact that during driver decompression using the drivers from CD or driverpacks.net method the screen would stay blank for up to 5 minutes.
It looks like the installation is frozen.

The solution is here.

If you use a self extracting 7zip file with the right switches it will display a progress bar during extraction.

code for the self extracting archive is DPdriverpack-name.exe x -y -aoa -o"%SystemDrive%"

put the command
FOR %%h IN (%CDDRIVE%\OEM\Drivers\DP*.exe) DO "%%h" x -y -aoa -o"%SystemDrive%"
in your presetup.cmd file and the driverpacks will extract showing a progress bar.
no more blank screen. Make sure the path reflects the path to your files.

Note: Your driverpack files must begin with "DP" for it to work. Or change the batch file.

To take it one step further I wrote a batch file to convert your driverpacks (.7z files) to sfx files (.exe).
It modifies the dialog for each file so it will say "Extracting 3 of 10 > DP_driverpack_name..."

Example


How it works is...

1) makes a list of all the .7z archives in the current folder
2) counts them
3) creates a resource script (.rc) based on file number and name
4) compiles the resource script (.rc) into a resource file (.res)
5) uses reshacker to update the .sfx file with the new dialog (.res file)
6) converts the .7z file to a .exe self extracting file (via copy. NO recompression)
7) repeats 3-6 until all files are converted

The original .7z files are not deleted and the creation of the .exe files is very quick.

Note: NO recompression is done to the driverpacks. All it does is add the sfx module via the copy command. It runs as fast as your PC can copy a file. About 10 seconds or so for the 10 archives I used (223mb).

After conversion just put the .exe files in your OEM\drivers folder and add the above line to your presetup.cmd file and that's it.

Download the DP_files.zip file and extract it. put the files in the folder with your .7z driver files.
you will have the modify.bat file and the bin folder in there.

Run the modify.bat file.
You no longer need the .7z files, just the .exe files.

Download files

modify.bat


Tested works with Pyron's, ile5's and BTS's setup.ex_

I use the program gorc.exe to compile the .rc files to .res files from below
Source

The background in my pic is achieved with this method
here

Any feedback would be great.
Thanks.

:EDIT: I removed the underscore "_" from the batch file to match the way BTS renames the files.

This post has been edited by jaws75: Dec 2 2006, 04:46 AM