Support for SYSPREP by splitting DPsFnshr.exe in two parts

I have been using version 6.07 and earlier with great success.  The great success is because I have been able to perform unattended installs on just about any piece of hardware.

As you know, the downside of unattended installs is the time required. Thus, I have been creating SYSPREP ghost images for rapid deployment on just about any piece of hardware (Great thing is that you only need two images to support a lot of hardware....One of the images is constructed on a legacy ACPI HAL and the second one on a MULTIPROCESSOR ACPI HAL).

For SYSPREP'ing, I have been using the following procedure:
1) Create an unattended install with KTD enabled that only includes the driver packs for CPU, Chip Set, Mass Storage
2) Copied the remaining driver packs to \OEM2 (Graphics, Sound, LAN, WLAN)
3) Split the 6.07 "DPs_fnsh.cmd" command into two separate parts: "DPs_fnsh1.cmd" and "DPS_fnsh2.cmd"
    DPs_fnsh1 would move all of the \OEM2 files to the \OEM folder
    DPs_fnsh1 would integrate all of the driver packs located in \OEM
4) Modify GUIRunOnce or cmdlines.txt to only execute DPs_fnsh1.cmd
5) Load the modified unattended install on a donor computer.  The donor computer will only have drivers for CPU, ChipSet and MassStorage.
6) The donor computer has SYSPREP tools installed.
    Modify SYSPREP CMDLINES.TXT that would also execute DPS_fnsh2.cmd at the end of SYSPREP
    Modify SYSPREP.INF that has BuildMassStorage=Yes
7) Execute SYSPREP.EXE with the options to use mini-setup, redect pnp, regen SID, shutdown
8) After shutdown, capture GHOST image
9) Load GHOST image on target computer
10) Start the target computer, which executes the SYSPREP mini-setup
    The detection of plug-n-play hardware occurs during the mini-setup and all of the integrated driver packs are used.
    At the end of mini-setup, DPSFnsh2 would install the graphics control panel and sound control panel based on the hardware of the target computer.

This was easily accomplished with 6.07 and earlier because the source for DPs_fnsh.cmd was available.

Is it possible to achieve this behavior the new 6.08 DPsFnshr.exe?   Maybe DPsFnshr.exe can be split into two sections... or add a parm to DPsFnshr.ini and allow for an option to indicate which ini file to use (DPsFnshr.exe -inifile=filename).

Thanks again and great work!

Last edited by zookeeper (2006-08-17 04:02:54)