My personal blog about pre-installation and other topics : Vista

Running Windows Vista on a PC with an Intel Atom processor

svengru — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:55:59 GMT

Many reviews are claiming that Windows Vista does not run well on a PC with an Intel Atom processor. I had to try this for myself…
I am not going to post benchmark results, but can tell you that the performance is fine for Office applications (tested with Office 2007) and browsing the internet.
The system was not slow at all.
Here is the performance rating:

WDS for cross-platform (32 bit WinPE to install a 64 bit OS) deployments

svengru — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:28:33 GMT

Having a WDS server running already? How about using it to deploy 64 bit versions of Windows Vista and Server 2008 as well?

The 64 bit versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Server 2008 can be deployed using a 32 bit WinPE. This means that you only need to maintain one Windows PE image.

So just add to 64 bit OS images to your WDS and they will be displayed on 64 bit capable PCs:

This is the simple part… So how about the unattend files for the images and how about drivers?

You only need one WDS-Client unattend file that controls the WinPE phase of the setup.
This one controls the 32 bit WinPE and the WDS client.
The potential issues you could run into are drivers pathes that your have in that file for the WinPE phase as these would reference
32 bit drivers that will make 64 bit OS installs fail. Solution: Remove all driver references in the WDS-Client unattend file.

So how can we add boot critical drivers? Simple: Add a driver path to the “Offline Service” section of your 32 and 64 bit OS image unattend files.
”Offline Service”? Yes, right “Offline Service” is not only used to update an OS image using Package Manager, but also called by the Windows Setup after the image is
applied to the hard disk. Here is how this looks like in System Image Manager:

"\\wds\REMINST\StorageDriver-x64” is a share on my WDS that contains all necessary storage driver for 64 bit.

You also need to add the missing 32 bit storage drives to your WDS WinPE Image using PEIMG.
A sample script that will help you to automate that process and needs to be launched from the “Windows PE Tools Command Prompt”
looks like this:

imagex /mountrw wds.WIM 1 mount
peimg /inf=drvs\*.inf mount\Windows
imagex /unmount /commit mount

WDSUTIL /Replace-Image /Image:"Custom WDS WinPE Image x86" /ImageType:Boot /Architecture:x86 /ReplacementImage /ImageFile:wds.wim

This mounts my WDS image “wds.wim”. Injects all drivers in the sub directory “drvs”. Unmounts the image and replaces the
current image named "Custom WDS WinPE Image x86" on the WDS with the updated one.

Driver installation and updating made easy: DPInst.exe

svengru — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:02:39 GMT

Installing or updating drivers on a system does always take a long time since you need to run many different driver installers to get all the devices in a system running. How about just running one installer and all your drivers are installed afterwards? A dream? Stop dreaming and do it right now with the Driver Package Installer (DPinst).

The details are here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791049.aspx

DPInst is part of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). More details here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/WDK/default.mspx

So, how can you use this tool?

Download the WDK in order to get the latest version of DPInst (can be found under the “DIFx” tools)
Create a new directory e.g. “c:\drivers” and copy DPInst.exe to that directory
Note: There is a different version for x86 and x64
Create a dpinst.xml file to control DPinst.
All possible settings can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791067.aspx
An example can look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<dpinst>

<search>
      <subDirectory>*</subDirectory>
    </search>

<language code="0x0409">
      <dpinstTitle>Device Driver Updater</dpinstTitle>
      <welcomeTitle>Welcome to the Device Installer!</welcomeTitle>
      <welcomeIntro>This wizard will walk you through updating the drivers for your device.</welcomeIntro>
      <installHeaderTitle>Installing the software for your device...</installHeaderTitle>
      <finishTitle>Congratulations! You finished installing your device drivers.</finishTitle>
    </language>

</dpinst>

Create sub directories for drivers and place the driver files (.inf, .sys, cat, .dll, etc.) into these directories.
My example looks like this:
Copy the complete directory to an external storage drive or network location and execute DPInst.exe to install / update the drivers
on that machine. This dialogue will be displayed and pressing “Next” will start the installation…

Done. :-) This will save a lot of your time.

I created a sample package that contains all necessary files for x86 and x64. You can get it here:

This sample also contains a script “installdrvs.cmd” which shows you how to use DPInst in silent mode.

Using DPInst in silent mode as part of your Windows XP or Windows Vista installation does work very well and is faster than using
a “Driver Path” in an unattend file as it will only install the drivers that match your hardware and not all drivers present in the driver directory.
So one example would be to add a driver folder containing DPinst,the dpinst.xml file and all drivers to the $OEM$\$1\ folder
(This will be on the C:\ driver after the installation) and then call installdrvs.cmd as “RunSynchronousCommand” during “Audit User” phase of
the Windows Vista setup. Looks like this in System Image Manager:

Have fun.

Windows Vista: Start Windows Update via script in Audit Mode

svengru — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:01:26 GMT

Windows Update is not enabled by default in Audit Mode.

This CMD script will enable it and check for updates:

NET STOP "Windows Update"
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 00000004
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v ScheduledInstallDay /t REG_DWORD /d 00000000
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v ScheduledInstallTime /t REG_DWORD /d 00000003
NET START "Windows Update"
WUAUCLT /DETECTNOW