Johan's Vista Install Notes From The Field

March 30, 2007

Friday session.

Deploying Vista 64 bit you must use 64 bit Windows PE, in Vista SP1 you can deploy 32 and 64 bit from the same version of PE.
Vista image on the DVD is already Sysprep'd
Bootmgr or bootmgr.exe reads BCD store first.
Source folder - boot.wim is Windows PE 2.0, this includes the Windows recovery environment, which is not included in the WAIK version of PE.
If you change boot index to 1, you will boot the recovery console or command prompt instead of PE GUI.
Shift - F10 opens command prompt during Vista setup.
log files are on the X drive Windows\panther setupact.log is the log file for setup.
most common error - invalid image = wrong product key, not a problem with the image
If you get an error message box do not click OK, click shift F10 and look through the setupacl.log for the error. If you click OK it will roll back and remove the log file.
shift ctrl F3 - audit mode on the Windows welcome screen, sysprep /oobe will return the system to general mode otherwise it will stay in audit mode.
"Methods for running windows setup" in the help file explains the different sections of the answer file.
KB 927521 explains the log files and what they are used for

Any reference to the D drive in the log files is incorrect, they are stored on the C drive.
Symantec 10.1 causes errors when trying to join domain, but is fixed in the newest version of Symantec.
You can sign drivers as approved through group policy, also putting them in the driver store you are assigning them as approved.
You can add other things to the driver store such as powerShell, not just drivers.
pnputil will let you browse the driver store.

To mount the image for offline driver injection - imagex /mountrw source wim, index, output folder

pkgmgr /o: location of mounted files /n: answer file /l:path\logfilename.log (to create a log file)
Does not return any info after return
look in pkgmgrlog.txt to see if it loaded
use imagex to unmount the file after you input your drivers

To extract an msu file expand -F: file name output path
In Image Mgr select input package, select the cab file from the extracted MSU, save the answer file - follow the same process using pkgmgr but specify your new XML answer file and it will add the package to the driver store.
Up to 512MB in Vista SP1 for PE, currently only 32MB
You will need to specify a temp env variable in PE to load something as big as PowerShell in the driver store.

diableCMDRequest.tag in the Windows\Setup\Scripts folder will disable the ability to open the cmd prompt
in Group Policy editor you can set a GUID from the inf file of a driver to install "Device Installation Restriction"
Vista will always use the drivers in driver strore if you set the policy Treat all digitally signed drivers equally..." will override this, but you must keep AU from downloading drivers. Located under Device Installation in Group Policy editor.