[JFX]

Well, the tweaks in the red group should not be used if there is no specific reason

For example, I disable UAC because after installation I have to set up a lot stuff and don't want every time an UAC prompt. But after all done I set UAC to maximum level.
Or I disable Hibernate cause I have too much RAM and my old TV-card don't survive a wakeup form hibernate state.

DisablePagefile should generally not be disable, but I often need to install Windows in a VM with very limited space and i sure there is no need for a pagefile.
With my PC that have 16GB RAM I actually could disable it, but i don't.
I set it to a small minimum size.
Often people say, that some program needs a pagefile to work, but if you ask them which program they instantly get some Alzheimer attack

Well I never found such a program, but a small configured pagefile don't hurt

This post has been edited by JFX: 09 March 2013 - 10:26 AM

[Atari800XL]

Thanks. I fully agree on UAC. For the "Postinstall" program I made it's better to have it turned off, temporarily.

Thanks for the pagefile explanation. Before, I couldn't imagine a situation where you would want to turn it off, but lately, when creating VM's (like those nice systems that "help" new W8 systems), I understand that in some VM cases, you can turn off the pagefile.

Testing the new switches worked very well, except for "-disableSFC" in Windows 8. Now I'm not sure if that's intended? (It shows "error at line 1026).

This post has been edited by Atari800XL: 05 December 2012 - 02:36 PM

[JFX]

Atari800XL, on 05 December 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

Testing the new switches worked very well, except for "-disableSFC" in Windows 8. Now I'm not sure if that's intended? (It shows "error at line 1026).

Ohh, that one I fixed already, but the final *.zip file was not recreated cause by silly AV software that didn't like the mpress packer.
Okay re-uploaded and version remains the same.

This post has been edited by JFX: 09 March 2013 - 10:26 AM

[Atari800XL]

Oh well, I was wondering if it maybe was not available for Windows 8 (turn off SFC).

...so I will make yet another testrun today, and will report back on the time and mb's saved!!!

[Lancelot_Real]

JFX, on 05 December 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

With my PC that have 16GB RAM I actually could disable it, but i don't.
I set it to a small minimum size.
Often people say, that some program needs a pagefile to work, but if you ask them....

PhotoShop 5.5 do not work without page file
check ps55try.exe (available at adobe ftp)
(and I know, nobody uses it anymore )
Ghost 11.5 complains about low memory without page file, besides my tests shows no trouble with/without pagefile.
Other things I can not remember, years past from my last trial ..
But my impression was:
some programs (or bad programmers) do not think about available ram provided by user
aside Windows apps naturally aware so there is no trouble setting pagefile to none if you do not fill windows with lots of apps.... (virtual tests )

In very past I also disabled pagefile, but than I decided to set it on 2nd hd,
Well, If I had 16 GB Ram (Current 2 GB ), I would reserve some of them for pagefile with ramdisk,
probably with Gavotte RamDisk to forget anything about pagefile....
I like not living with troubles

Thanks for the new version,
my next tests, months later.....

See You

[JFX]

Can not reproduce with Ghost 11.5, but you right with PhotoShop 5.5.

Pagefile on RAMDisk makes no sense, as pagefile is only used if physical RAM is on its limit.

See You

This post has been edited by JFX: 06 December 2012 - 03:19 AM

[Lancelot_Real]

Ghost 11.5 cause such a warning by explorer taskbar when taking/restoring images,
tested on Gena , well better say: using and experiencing for years now....


The Sense part of "Pagefile on RAMDisk" to me is:
whatever windows use pagefile for, better not to speed down,
with the idea in mind "computer tasks always work with lowest step speed"
(same with Chemical Reactions, Chemistry 1-2 - http://chemistry.abo...eactionrate.htm )

Generally,
Read speed of hd is quite high these days, no need to :> , will not be noticable for most,
For tests:
You can only notice when you read and write on hd for a task (use different hd for tests )
ex: put 500 MB file to ramdisk, create an iso on hd (I use this trick time to time for many years now, but time to time due to low ram I have )
on other hand,
using files individually (one by one etc.) you will notice no difference --> (this seems to me more pagefile case, but who knows...)

Okey , okey not "very" sensefull , but would "clear" one factor from my mind

ps: with moreee ram, I can also use temp/cache folders on ramdisk, for same reason..... I feel browsers nowadays "may" work better, never tested....

Anyway, all these stuff quite out of topic now,
See you

[alacran]

JFX

Could it be possible to add a feature for $oem$ file.

Best regards

[JFX]

Hi alacran,

what exactly do you mean by $oem$ file?

[Atari800XL]

So Alacran hasn't replied on the $oem$ file yet, maybe he found out that a custom $oem$ dir is already supported?

I just wanted to come back to my testing of the new commandline switches (DisableSystemRestore, DisableSFC, DisableHibernate).

I did a quick test on installing Windows 8, first time without the switches, second time with the new switches. As expected (as JFX mentioned), after the second test there's about 400mb more free space on C:\. (thanks to DisableSFC). So that's a good thing, and I'll keep using it for the time being.
I also expected a little decrease in Setup time, but that was not the case, I wonder why?

Thanks JFX, for making WinNTSetup better once more....

This post has been edited by Atari800XL: 09 December 2012 - 02:23 AM

[JFX]

Atari800XL, on 09 December 2012 - 02:21 AM, said:

I also expected a little decrease in Setup time, but that was not the case, I wonder why?

Hmm, the entire T-9 til T-3 time phase of GUIMode setup should be skipped.
This should save ~ 3 minutes.

[Atari800XL]

So "T-9 to T-3" also applies to Win8?
I will test also on Windows XPin the coming days...

[JFX]

Sorry, did not noticed you meant installing windows 8.
Well no, the file protecting is only a "feature" of windows XP and 2003.

[Atari800XL]

Well, another stupidity on my part then. Luckily, it's not the first time. Very sorry to waste your time.
I'm a bit confused now, because I used 3 commandline options on Windows 8 (DisableSystemRestore, DisableSFC, DisableHibernate), and have 400mb more free space on C:
Now if DisableSFC has no effect on Win8, it must be one of the other 2.
Another thing that added to my confusion is that the "-DisableSFC" commandline option caused on error (using with Windows 8) on the second-to-last version (which you corrected the same day). That's why I thought it *did* have an effect under Win8.
But all is well, I'm looking forward to testing -DisableSFC on Windows XP.

This post has been edited by Atari800XL: 09 December 2012 - 02:37 PM

[Atari800XL]

OK, I've done my XP test, first a normal setup on my testnotebook with WinNTSetup, then a second test with -disablesfc, -disablesystemrestore, -disablehibernate.

With the second test, I confirmed that the commandline options were also checked in the "Tweaks" screen.

I timed all the stages by hand (t-39, t-13, etc). I was expecting (as JFX said) stages t-9 through t-3 to be skipped (because of -disablesfc), saving me 1m40s of setup times (as the first test showed).
But, completely unexpected, all the stages took exactly as long on test 2, as they did on test 1. So in some way, disablesfc was not correctly applied. Now I'm sure it must be something *I* did (maybe a conflicting setting in Winnt.sif, even though I can't find anything).

Nevertheless, this test has shown me that the sfc stage only took 1m40s on this particular system, and that's still worth the test.

[Scampy82]

Hi, JFX

The storage of the last file location does not function. for example: I have 01.sif and 02.sif. If 01.sif is already given as the parameter qualifier, the choice of 02.sif is to begin from scratch, and not from the folder where all *.sif are stored

This post has been edited by Scampy82: 11 December 2012 - 06:12 AM

[wimb]

When using WinNTSetup on computer with UEFI firmware for Install of Windows 8 NL on USB partition,
then I found may be some bugs.

A default boot entry for Windows 8 was made in EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD (which is good),
but for my existing {default} entry Grub4dos in Boot\BCD the description was modified to Windows 8 (which is wrong).

Also my Windows 8 Source DVD was identified as da-DK whereas I have NL version.

This post has been edited by wimb: 11 December 2012 - 10:38 AM

[JFX]

@Scampy82
Sorry, i forgot about command line option here, will fix it in next version.

@Wimb
the language issue is strange, it only display what's between <LANGUAGE> and </LANGUAGE> inside the wim XML description.

The uEFI part is really a bit buggy, it actually should process both BCD stores equal but currently don't.
Hmm, still have no EFI Board here, 1 thing I wonder about.

A uEFI bootable hard disk have to be formated as GPT so it actually can't boot on an old bios PC.
Does this mean BIOS sees the disk as MBR and use the protected MBR in the 0 sector?
Then how does the booted OS see it?

This post has been edited by JFX: 09 March 2013 - 10:26 AM

[wimb]

Actually using computer with UEFI firmware then I can Install Windows 8 on normal USB-harddisk having MBR and three primary partitions.
The first Boot partition E: is FAT32 (Win8 Format Tool) and contains only the EFI folder and the second partition M: is NTFS and filled by using WinNTSetup.
The Win 8 Setup ISO is for a LanguageGroup where nl-NL to belongs but WinNTSetup sees it as da-DK.
I used manually Win 8 tools bootsect.exe to reset MBR and FAT32 PBR according to Win8 and bcdboot.exe to create the EFI folder on FAT32 partition.

bootsect.exe /nt60 E: /force /mbr

bcdboot.exe M:\Windows /l nl-NL /s E: /f UEFI

And that works for me.

In what xml file is the Language info ? I cannot find such file. May be that is why da-DK is used ....

After Install of Win 8 then with Win8 tool I add Boot\BCD and made entry for booting Windows 8 from USB on BIOS computer
and I added Grub4dos entry in Boot\BCD for booting Image files

Now I can boot from USB-harddisk on BIOS and on UEFI computers with Win8 (flat)
and with Grub4dos using all kind of Image files (Linux + LiveXP + 7PE + Portable XP or Portable Win7)

Grub4dos booting Image files on UEFI computer is only possible after switching in UEFI the Advanced OS setting from Win8 to Win7 / Other
For booting Windows 8 then the UEFI Advanced OS setting Win8 is used.

This post has been edited by wimb: 11 December 2012 - 03:43 PM

[JFX]

Interesting, I never got VmWare in EFI mode to boot from MBR disk.
Seems there is no real way to detect, if a pc have an uEFI BIOS. The only thing one can detect is with which one it was currently booted.

wimb, on 11 December 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

In what xml file is the Language info ? I cannot find such file. May be that is why da-DK is used ....

The XML is inside the metadata of a *.wim file.
You can display it with imagex.exe.

imagex -info "wimfile"