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The Art of OEM - nLite & OEM Preinstallation


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  1. 1. Would you like for Windows Designer Studio to perform most of the operations described in this guide?

    • Yes, and I want more features too!
      69
    • Yes
      13
    • No, I'd rather stick with the plain old Windows Setup routine.
      5
    • No, it's just a waste of time; nLite/vLite will always be enough for my needs.
      7
  2. 2. Now that this guide is complete, are you happy with its contents?

    • Yes, it's a great idea!
      63
    • Somewhat, I used some of the things described here.
      20
    • Probably, but it is too complex for me to handle.
      7
    • No
      4
  3. 3. Which of these should benefit you the most and you'd like to see first in Windows Designer Studio? (more details soon)

    • Windows Setup SDK (Panther Engine) - WIM capture, Setup customization and ISO making, like in Parts 3 and 4
      46
    • VKEY Explorer - an advanced tool to design the registry of the OS you are designing
      5
    • Package Designer - a set of diff and compression tools to allow you to author/create/add/remove windows components and preinstalled apps
      18
    • VM Workbench - an extension for the free VMware Player product to test the results of your work before finalizing
      10


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Hmm, after re-checking the dependencies, also copying them to the sources folder, running depends again to make sure nothing's wrong (only missing is MSJAVA.dll), the setup still dies. Also downloaded the clean setup from sourceforge.net, but it still did not work... :/

What could be the problem?

-- Bas

Are you sure you got the .NET 2.0 working properly inside the PE ? There might be files with different versions and there are missing exports due to this reason... or...

Have you ran the SETUP.EXE locally (from a write-enabled folder) to see if it works properly?

If you still can't figure it out, get a evaluation for Norton Ghost 12 Recovery and add the stuff in your \SOURCES folder in their ISO. If it works there, the cause is your PE. I've also noticed that WinPE 2.0 boosts significantly the speed of the Panther SDK.

I've also had trouble with WinPE 1.x, and each time some missing export was to blame. AFAIK, the Panther run-time code requires a RAM drive, for temp folder and .NET 2.0

Hope to get Part 5 soon, I'm gathering screenshots in the mean time :sneaky:

If you discover anything else that I've forgot and should be in Part 4, let me know.

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Hmm, it seems like BartPE's ramdisk plugin is not using my Server 2003 ramdisk.sys, but an own ramdriv.sys. Let's see how I can solve this. :)

EDIT: Hmm, I don't see a solution... :( I guess the ramdisk plugin inf file needs to be changed too, but what?

Edited by NetworkService
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The WinPE 2.0 itself loads in 384 Mb of RAM properly, I've tested with Norton Ghost 12 which is based on it. Set MinimumMemory = 0 in DOSNET.INF in the SDK. The WIM beta 1 (as well as Longhorn 4xxx) installed with 256 Mb minimum memory, not 512.

Use in VMware: Edit -> Preferences -> Memory - Allow most virtual machine memory to be swapped

and in your VM: Options -> Advanced -> Disable memory page trimming

This cuts down some 33% out of performance, but will do the job for you

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dexter.inside.... i am so impressed with this guide. I can't wait to give it a try, as it is something I intend to master also. i'm sure it's a tremendous timesaver especially when used with driverpacks.

Thanks for the major contribution!!! This guide should be stickied on the msfn.org homepage along side of server 2003 -> workstation guide, as it is equally as valuable.

Jim

<edit> what software do you use for your explorer? as in picture 1?

Edited by aspenjim
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1) a much shorter guide to describe just the preinstallation of Office 2007 on XP

2) a minimal sysprep reseal scenario, no extra drivers on setup information

3) adding the WIM containing it to Norton Ghost 12 recovery CD and launching the setup routine from Symantec SRESHELL, which is the fastest install scenario I've made yet.

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Hi, I'm back again, with another question. :) I have just added the SOURCES folder to an Ghost 12 CD, and created an ISO with just the folders/files BOOT, EFI, SOURCES and BOOTMGR. It boots correctly to the SREShell, and I can choose an command prompt there, and start D:\Sources\Setup.exe. The first time I tried, it didn't correctly format the partition in VMware 6, and died with an error about preparing the hard drive. Restarted the setup, now manually formatted the seemingly created C:\ partition, and installed on it. The image got on the drive, but then I got an error about that writing boot.ini failed, or something like that. :) Setuperr.log shows an error about NtPathToArcPath failed for \Device\HardDisk0\Partition1.

How can this be solved? :)

-- Bas

EDIT: After reformatting a few times with the same HDD, it installed, but I got an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE on first boot. On VPC, where I made the image, I followed the instructions as mentioned in part 2, and sysprep.inf contains all required stuff. The setup issue still needs to be solved, as it's not useful to need to format 5 times. :P

Edited by NetworkService
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I think you must also update the boot code, like BOOTSECT /NT52 C:

Of course, as a long term goal, I must add to my app a wrapper for a windows setup of my own, so that I can install both XP/2003 and Vista/2008 using the same method.

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  • 3 weeks later...

easy way :

just put sources folder to WinFLPs disc

delete Setup directory

add setup.exe to run from winpeeshl.ini

load setupreg.hiv from I386\system32

and change value of SETUP\CmdLine

from "\Setup\SetupLauncher.exe" to "winpeshl.exe"

it worked like a charm.. :)

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