zomos

I can do it but the problem I see is how do you want me to identify disks/partitions that do not have any letters assigned ? A hard disk can have partitions without drive letters and so can a USB disk. If you want to help me, search the net how to enumerate all of the physical disks attached to the system in User Mode and without WMI (note: I am not interested in enumerating partitions). Below is an example how to do it in Kernel Mode, but I prefer not to load any drivers to accomplish such simple task. Enumerating device objects representing disks and partitions

Maybe, but please convince me that this cannot be done by: 1) First setting the drive letters with MMC/Disk Management 2) Next generating a migrate.inf file based on settings made in pt.1. After all, with Disk Management, you can remove drive letters and even add letters to partitions that do not have any letters assigned.

Trance, I already did it. It works well if I migrate nLite settings from HIVESFT.INF to WINNT.SIF and TXTSETUP.SIF files. It just bothers me that I have to make a utility to correct nLite's output, but I will make it if nLite's author does not give me a good reason why he keeps these vital settings in HIVESFT.INF instead of the documented ProfilesDir, etc. in WINNT.SIF.

Yes, I wrote it. No, MkMigrateInf.cmd nor MkMigrateInf2.cmd did not work for me because: 1) It does not produce a full migrate.inf with all the current drive assignments 2) It does not handle backslashes correctly 3) It does not wrap the lines for long values like in a real migrate.inf 4) It produces invalid migrate.inf file if there are non REG_BINARY values in the registry (as with some RAID systems) 5) It uses REG.EXE that does not work without LSASS - when nobody is loged on (e.g.: PicoXP) On the cosmetic side: MakeMigrateInf.exe is smaller and faster than Reg.exe + MkMigrateInf.cmd and there is only one file to distrubute. When I enable the command line parsing, MkMigrateInf.exe can be renamed to Reg2Inf.exe and used to export any Registry Key as an *.inf file ( in INF format ). That was its primary purpose to start with. Zomos P.S. Reg.exe cannot export from registry in INF format.

The drive letter ordering IS NOT DEPENDENT on the "harddrives order connecting" with my method. Windows uses partition signatures to assign drive leters. Drive and Partition order just does not matter for letter assignment because migrate.inf persistently overrides the default values proposed by Windows. The utility I had written to generate migrate.inf copies the current drive assignments WHATEVER THEY ARE set to in the PE (including USB drives). These assignemts in migrate.inf are later used by the text mode setup, REGARDLESS of "harddrives order connecting". If the "Program Files" and "Documents And Settings" are on a different physical drives Windows will run much faster because the I/O can be done in parallel on multiple physical drives. The same statement is not true for different partition on the same physical drive. Apparently you had not read the outline of my method nor tried it. Zomos

It is possible to exactly define the drive letters before the Windows XP installation. It is possible to choose your drive letters without such silly things as removing hard drives or deleting partitions. It is even possible to put "Program Files" and "Documents and Settings" on different physical drives so Windows runs faster. See the solution outlined at the link below: http://www.msfn.org/board/profiles-directo...me-t125819.html

Hello? Anybody out there with an answer to the ProfilesDir problem ? Should I start making a utility for migrating nLite settings from HIVESFT.INF to WINNT.SIF and TXTSETUP.SIF files ?

Ponch is right. The BOOTFIX.BIN that is responsible for displaying the "Press any key to boot from CD....." will skip this prompt IF there are no alternatives to booting from CD. For example: if there is no bootable hard disk partition. I can make a custom BOOTFIX.BIN that always displays the "Press any key to boot from CD....." prompt, but what would be the point of it ?

Ponch is right. The BOOTFIX.BIN that is responsible for displaying the "Press any key to boot from CD....." will skip this prompt IF there are no alternatives to booting from CD. For example: if there is no bootable hard disk partition.