To improve the windows setups I've been falling back on my system builder skills. I have been using winpe, unattend, and various batch files to:
Boot to a WinPE7 cd with the scripting option included, leverage a nice vbscript a former employee wrote
blank a drive
install windows with an unattended text file
drop all possible drivers and hotfixes in separate folders for all/any workstation I support
install wmp11 and IE8 and update the OS with hotfixes before the first boot.
Daisy chain the standard program installations (install one, reboot, repeat). I have not dared to try to automate this step.
This all is being done without using any non approved software...or at least attempting to
I still used the quasi approved (murky details) cloning program and Microsoft's imagex and gimagex (gui version - not microsoft) to capture settings.
All of this stuff has made system building (my life) easier... however I doubt any of it would have been encouraged had I mentioned my suggestions first.
The one annoying problem I found an inelegant solution to was this:
Each brand used a different preinstallation activation key so their setupp.ini is different and an unknown number of branded dll or system files. Using volume licensing takes care of this but unfortunately to be safe I'm using the OEM I386 folder for each system. The various add on junk that is copied to the C:\ root directory during installation can be put in $OEM$\$1\JUNKHERE
Brand x - w:\GRTMPOEM_EN_X\I386\$OEM$\$1\JUNKHERE
Brand y - w:\GRTMPOEM_EN_Y\I386\$OEM$\$1\JUNKHERE
What I did not like was that "junkhere" is the same and it does take up 500+ mb of space. If I had a small hard drive or usb stick (not allowed) then I could mount the drive or device to an empty folder in each distribution directory and only have the one instance. Rather than reinvent the wheel I just decided to do this stupid simple command
batch file - wxp(brand_name)me.bat
xcopy w:\GRTMPOEM_EN\I386\$OEM$\$1\JUNKHERE /s /e c:\
winnt32.exe /unattend:w:\unattend(brandname).txt /s:w:\GRTMPOEM_EN_X\I386 /syspart c:
I just put the junkhere folder under the same distribution folder style and removed it from the specific brand subdirectories. If I figure out what files are unique/bios locked to which system I could pare the number of directories and files down and simply toggle which ones go with which system...
Maybe this joint would not appreciate these efforts I have made but I am sure some other place would... maybe. I imagine a panel of Simon Cowell snark if I presented this to the other technicians. Or if it wasn't perfect then something would be nitpicked over.
On the other hand at least I am bothering to remove the built in windows games automatically.
DarkHumour
