FAQ section update - Ultimate Newbie FAQ for 2008 - Hi!

Hi DriverPacks.net, Bashrat and friends!

Phew!

I'm very glad to have discovered DriverPacks via unattended.sf.net's wiki links, but browsing through this forum then looking through the FAQs and guides I am now officially overwhelmed! Driverpacks are just what every frustrated win sysadmin needs and so now I need to learn the best wayto utilise driverpacks, on single machine DVD installs and network multicasts for the networks I help maintain.

Problem is that I feel that a number of the FAQs and guides on these forums are out of date now and there are much superior, newer tools for the job that only the win admin hardcore and long time dp.net forum members will be aware of- I know just how fast the software landscape shifts. For example, you have  'What VMWare & VirtualPC can and cannot do' which says "They cannot:- emulate your hardware, or any specific device (in particular: SATA controllers can NOT be emulated!)" which may still apply to those two VMs, I don't care because VirtualBox (which is open source too) does feature SATA support as well as good USB 2.0 support (hence any USB device will work if your host hachine has USB 2.0 and you have a driver for the guest OS) and VirtualBox even lets you boot OS's on real, native partitions if your user has access to that partition. Yes, I know that USB doesn't cover all devices as you won't be able to emulate PCI/AGP/PCIX etc devices, would you?!?

Keeping in mind that I prefer to use open source software whereever possible, what guides, FAQs or specific apps would you guys recommend for

1- Creating a DVD containing XP-SP2, driverpacks, updates and a number of progs like Office, AVG or whatever that can be installed in as few steps as we choose. For example I'd like to just have to enter the network name of the machine and its IP address (we use static IPs here), if anything, when I install as that would be about the only thing unique per machine. I did find a free tool that integrated a number of tools (stuff like ryanvm, nlite etc.) into one, simplifying this whole process yet still giving you the power to tweak and configure your setup. Duno what it was called or if it was any good/ the best.

2- Best tool for multicast, network deployments. I've got clonezilla sussed for multicasting images when all the hardware is the same and I'm now looking into using unattended to achieve the same but with varying hardware targets. But, I've only just discovered driverpacks so maybe now I coulld put together a universal image that will run on pretty much anything? Is this possible or not? Do I have to set up unattended for this? If so, where is the best, most up-to-date guide on setting up unattended with a driverpacks modded XPSP2 install?

Thanks very much everyone for your help and tips, I look forward to reading your responses!

Dan