Sorry for the spam from me today... I wanted to know if there is
interest in an Office 2007 + updates, IE7 + updates, and WMP11 + updates
script chains. I have working ones, although I didn't care to localize
any update downloads besides English so if someone needs that some extra
work will be required.
Also, when I do my builds I have a series of 4 autoit scripts that run
right before the end. The first does a few desktop tweaks, like arrange
icons, and several start menu tweaks. The second changes the folder view
options to what I like. The third performs the "first run" setup in IE7
(it's in all my builds), tweaks trusted sites for our university, sets
notepad as html editor, disables phishing blocker, and sets google as
homepage and default search engine. These scripts are pretty rough, but
they work 99% flawless after all my tweaking. I don't mean to suggest
them in to the regular unattended repository, but I think some people
may find them useful and maybe can realize the awesomeness of autoit.
You can look at my code and reference the online docs that autoit
provides (http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/), I'm sure doing
that anyone can pick up on it.
So if anyone is interested in any of that stuff, let me know and I can
shoot them out in some fashion.
*********
Secondly, I want to share something else. Some time ago I asked around
if we could format the display of the menu items that would span
multiple lines, and got nowhere. Well I worked out my own system to make
the .bat scripts look pretty during the menu's, simply using spacing.
For example, this is the beginning of my core master build:
:: MASTER: Core Box Install
SP3 + Updates + .Net 1.1/2/3.5 + McAfee + IE7 + UI Tweaks
This will build any desktop out there. Doesn't include modem or
bluetooth.
:: ruler
----------------------------------------------------------|-------------
------------------------------------------------------------------|-----
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--|
:: ruler above is the adjusted ruler, below is an 80 character ruler
(screen width)
:: ruler
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------|
:: ruler remember to remove the length of "n) name_of_script.bat ("
from the adjusted ruler's begining
Paste the above in to notepad or something similar that uses a common
spaced font and isn't wordwrapped. Basically the first line is what
you'll see on the menu. However it'll get wrapped because of the
character limit on the screen. The second line is a ruler, the dashes
and the first | mark off where the first line will end, the following
dashes and | represent the spacing of the following lines. So the result
of the above header is a menu item that looks like this:
1) _builds_core.bat (Core Box Install
SP3 + Updates + .Net 1.1/2/3.5 + McAfee + IE7 + UI Tweaks
This will build any desktop out there. Doesn't include modem or
bluetooth.)
VS the usual look of:
1) _builds_core.bat (Core Box Install SP3 + Updates + .Net 1.1/2/3.5 +
McAfee + IE7
+ UI Tweaks This will build any desktop out there. Doesn't include modem
or bluetoo
th.)
Notice that on the first line I'm compensating for the length of "1)
_builds_core.bat (" (just like the reminder in the comments) which
includes the filename of that script... yeah I'm anal... but you know
what, this system is being used by a handful of techs and I wanted to
make it readable.
*********
Finally here's the last thing I want to share. Because everything
happens on the administrator profile, including the autoit tweaks to the
UI and such, I needed a solution to easily migrate the administrator
profile over the default user, so that new users would get the tweaked
environment. However because windows sucks so much, there's no end-all
way to get this done easily.
I worked out something that is the next best thing (I think). Here's how
it works when you're building the machine:
- Start unattended, pick your options like normal and walk away
until you see the machine at the logon screen to tell you that you're
done.
o You can always log in as administrator, perform more setup and
tweaks, reboot and then continue
- Log in as user migrator and step away for a minute
- If nothing is happening on the screen, log out.
- Log in as administrator, delete the migrator user and the
associated profile.
What the above did was copy the administrator's profile over default
user, as well as clean up the netinst directory by deleting it for you
(our XP key is in there! Har har). Sure, it's things that can be done by
hand. But when you're building 20 machines together... typing in
"migrator" and hitting enter, 20 times, is much easier and faster than
the alternative of repetitive clicking.
Under the hood this is accomplished with a combination of autoit and
batch files. The migrator user is automatically created during the
unattended build, and assigned a login script for which a netlogon share
is also automatically created. The scripts are copied to the proper
places, and are self terminating so they get deleted along with
everything else the first time they run. So migrator is a one time
thing.
*********
Anyway, this is just a bunch of stuff that I worked out to make my life
easier and to make unattended work for our situation here. Feel free to
ask me any questions about the above nonsense.
Steve
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