The vbs script is a little nicer than version one (CMD) because it runs without any windows and in my opinion vbs scripts just run smoother . Also, it is a single file and the tutorial has less steps.

So for all of you who grabbed version one, lol, grab version 2!!! And if you are using WIM images, you can simply mount your image, replace the script, and unmount/commit.

Repeat instructions are below:

When running sysprep in Windows 7 with the unattend.xml file, you will probably notice that the taskbar icons are something that don’t copy over. Well that is because the icons are not part of the users profile. So the copyprofile=true command does work for almost everything, but it doesn’t copy over your taskbar icons. So here is a script that will do it for you.

Step #1

Download the vbs script (11kb). Click Here to Download or Right Click and Save Target As….
You might have to remove the .txt extension when you are downloading the script. You are going to drop this script into the correct place during audit mode.

Step #2

Copy the vbs script into the startup folder in the start menu.

Step #3

The vbs script unpins WMP, IE, and Windows Explorer and then repins the icons in the order you want. My file has this order:

Windows Explorer, IE, Firefox, Word, Excel, Outlook, WMP

Step #4

Now run sysprep as you normally would and the script is copied into the default profile. That means for every new user, the script pins the icons in the order you want, the script then deletes itself and never runs again. For the correct procedure on sysprepping your machine, read my Windows 7 Sysprep Tutorial.

Sorry for not posting this earlier but I have had a rough last couple months. Just now getting back into the swing of things.

When running sysprep in Windows 7 with the unattend.xml file, you will probably notice that the taskbar icons are something that don’t copy over. Well that is because the icons are not part of the users profile. So the copyprofile=true command does work for almost everything, but it doesn’t copy over your taskbar icons.

Thankfully the “Deployment Guys” already have a VBS script that will pin and unpin icons. I have edited this script and done most of the hard work for you. Basically we are going to dump a few scripts into the “startup folder” (and yes I said startup folder, it is messy but it works and finishes clean) which will run only the first time every new user logs in. It will pin the icons you want, in any order you want, both to the taskbar and the startmenu and then the script is deleted from the startup folder and never runs again for that user. It does work perfectly and I currently am using this in a corporate environment with around 400-500 computers.

Step #1

Download the scripts that I have packaged together. Click here to download. Again, most of these scripts were written by The Deployment Guys, I have just tweaked them and added a few. It is a 35mb zip file.

The zip file contains the following files:

- taskbar.bat
- taskbar_operations.cmd
- pin.wsf
- unpin.wsf
- pinitem.vbs
- listverbs.vbs
- zti-specialfolderlib.vbs
- ztiutility.vbs

You are going to drop these scripts into the correct places during audit mode.

Step #2

Copy the taskbar.bat file into the startup folder in the start menu.

Below is an explanation of what that taskbar.bat file is doing:

cd C:\Windows\Scripts\
This changes the directory to the scripts folders.

call taskbar_operations.cmd
Calls the cmd file which unpins and pins the taskbar icons.

cd C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup”
This changes the directory to the startup folder.

DEL taskbar.bat
This deletes the taskbar.bat after it is done, so it won’t run again for that user.

Step #3

The taskbar_operations.cmd file is the file that has all the custom icon paths in it that are pinned or unpinned.
My file has the following in this order:

Windows Explorer, IE, Firefox, Word, Excel, Outlook, WMP

If you want to change these, simply look in the cmd file and you will figure out what you need to change, it is pretty simple. Also, the default order when running sysprep is WMP, IE, and Windows Explorer, so the script is actually unpinning WMP, unpinning IE, (windows explorer is now bumped over to the left side) and then it pins the rest of the icons in order.

Step #4

Create a “scripts” folder in the C:\Windows directory and drop all of the files into it, except for the taskbar.bat file which you should already have in your startup folder.

Step #5

Now run sysprep as you normally would and the scripts are copied into the default profile. That means for every new user, the scripts pin the icons in the order you want, the script then deletes itself and never runs again. For the correct procedure on sysprepping your machine, read my Windows 7 Sysprep Tutorial.

I am definitely not a programmer, but this works, and I don’t see Microsoft giving us a better solution .

Rudi De Vos over in the UltraVNC forums posted a fix for this problem.

Also, here is the link for the newest version of UVNC.

I have tested Rudi’s fix in test environment and we are now using this in production environment within Windows 7 environment and it is working great. Thanks Rudi!

UVNC Listener

ABC.com Logo

Step #1

You will need to download the Move Network’s “Move Player” which is what ABC.com uses to stream their online TV shows. (Download Here) Visit the link and click on the red “Download” button.

ABC Move Network Player

Step #2

It is going to ask you to save or run it. Either will work. Once it finishes downloading double click on it to install it. The install should take less than a minute.

Step #3

Once it is installed you should see the screen I have included saying the player is installed.

Move Network Player Installed

Step #4

Now head over to ABC.com and enjoy your favorite TV shows.

OCZ Flash Drive - Install Windows 7

Step #1

The first thing you will need to do is format your USB Flash Drive or Portable Hard Drive so that your computer will read it as a bootable drive. So plug your flash drive into a workstation.

Step #2

Open up Command Prompt / CMD (located in Program Files->Accessories) and type the following commands:

DiskPart
List Disk (this will list the disks currently plugged into your computer. Most likely, the C: drive on that computer will be listed as disk 0, and you will have to look down the list to see which disk your flash drive is. Look at the corresponding disk sizes to easily figure it out.)
Select Disk 3 (I am using 3 as example for assigned flash drive)
Clean
Create Partition Primary
Select Partition 1
Active
Format FS=NTFS Quick
Assign (you can assign a particular drive letter if you want, example: assign=E:)
Exit (this will exit DiskPart)
Exit (this will exit CMD)

Step #3

Next you will need to either insert your Windows 7 CD and browse to the CD or open up your Windows 7 ISO and browse to the folders within it. (If you are using ISO, I would suggest extracting the contents to a new folder)

Step #4

Next you will need to spoof your flash stick so that the computer will think it is an install CD. From within the root of the Windows 7 CD or ISO contents, right click while holding shift key and select “Open Command Windows Here”. This will open up a Command Prompt window within that directory. Then input the following commands:

cd Boot
bootsect /nt60 E: (I am using drive letter E: as my flash drive)
exit (exits command prompt)

Step #5

Next simply copy over the entire contents of your windows 7 CD or ISO to your flash drive.

Step #6

Reboot the computer your are wanting to install Windows 7 on with the flash drive plugged in, hit the boot key (normally F12, DEL, or ESC) to select the boot device, boot to your flash drive, and it will go immediately to the Windows 7 Setup screen.

FileZilla FTP Logo

Step #1

Download and install the FileZilla FTP client from their website at http://filezilla-project.org/.

Step #2

At the top left of the application, go to File-> Site Manager. In site manager you are going to setup a new connection with the host your are connecting with.

FileZilla FTP Site Manager

Step #3

Go over to the “Transfer Settings” tab and select Limit Simultaneous connections. Then input 10 for the Maximum Number of Connections. This will optimize your connection speeds with most servers to get the highest download speeds; and without them disconnecting. (My download speeds jumped from 900KB down to 2500KB down just from changing this one option.

FileZilla FTP - Transfer Settings

Mozilla Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar

Download the Multirow Bookmarks Add-On

There are two things you need to enable to make the media in VLC render more smoothly.

• Tools : Preferences: Video: Output: OpenGL Video Output
• Tools : Preferences: DeinterlacingMode: Blend

One thing I like about VLC is that it is easy to download, distribute, and use. With Media Player Classic, you have to make sure you have a codec pack for media to play. For me that is not an issue, but for the standard user, codec packs and knowing how to use them, can sometimes be confusing. If you haven’t tried VLC 1.0 yet, you might want to take a second look.

VLC Player

You will need the following to proceed:
Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 RC (Download from Microsoft) : 05.01.09

Once you have installed WAIK then you will need to browse to your start menu and click on “Deployment Tools Command Prompt”. I have provided a picture below.

DISM

Once you have launched DTCP you will need to follow through the commands I have compiled below. The first one I have provided a screenshot.

DISM – Step #1 – Prep/Cleanup

DISM /Cleanup-Wim

The DISM cleanup command simply cleans up any previous wims/mounts you have been working with. If you do this a lot, you will need to use this command otherwise you will start receiving errors from previous wims possibly still left on the system.

DISM Step #1

DISM – Step #2 – Copy WinPE 3.0 to your local C Drive

copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim

This creates a winpe_x86 folder on your C: drive and then copies the contents of the WinPE folder from the WAIK installation to your folder.

DISM – Step #3 – Mounting .Wim File on your local C Drive

Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\winpe_x86\mount

This command mounts the wim file that was copied over in step #2 so that you can browse the system32 folder and insert your custom scripts, etc.

DISM – Step #4 – Adding Packages to your WIM

Dism /image:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:”C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\winpe-wmi.cab”
Dism /image:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:”C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\en-us\winpe-wmi_en-us.cab”

There are many packages you can add to your WINPE boot environment, these are two I always add to mine.

DISM – Step #5 – Adding Drivers to WinPE

DISM /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Driver /driver:C:\YOUR_FOLDER_OF_INF_DRIVERS\ /recurse

A nice addition to DISM over the previous peimg command in WINPE 2.0 is the ability to add drivers with the /recurse command. The /recurse command now allows us to simply have all of our drivers in their own directory and tell DISM to scan the root folder and everything beneath it. The number of sub directories won’t matter. I have a huge library of drivers, for example, you will want to have the network and vga drivers for anything that you boot up to in the WinPE environment. By adding the network driver to your WinPE boot environment, it allows you to access network shares for capturing and deploying .wim images.

DISM – Step #6 – Adding Custom Scripts, Batch Files, Etc.

xcopy /e /y “C:\YOUR_FOLDER_OF_SCRIPTS” C:\winpe_x86\mount\Windows\System32\

Without adding anything to your WinPE boot environment you will simply be left with a command prompt window when booting to it on a computer. I have added over 15 different batch scripts with different functions. Click here to download my WinPE discs. One thing I highly suggest adding is GImageX. GImageX is a very small GUI program that you can add to be able to capture, deploy, and mount images within the WinPE boot environment. I have provided a picture of GImageX GUI below.

For WinPE 3.0 Boot Environment - Mount, Deploy, Capture Images

DISM – Step #7 – Unmounting your finished .WIM

Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Commit

This commits the final changes to your .WIM file and anything you added to it. It is very important to unmount your .WIM file when you have finished.

DISM – Step #8 – Copies your .WIM to Boot ISO

copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim /Y

DISM – Step #9 – Creates bootable .ISO of WinPE 3.0

oscdimg -n -bc:\winpe_x86\etfsboot.com c:\winpe_x86\ISO c:\winpe_x86\winpe_x86.iso

Now, if you are wanting to use a flash stick you will need to format a flash stick in a certain way, and then simply copy the contents of the c:\winpe_x86\ISO\ to your flash drive. And thats it! Stick it in a computer, restart, and boot to it. The .ISO made in step #9 can simply be burned to a CD with Nero or other program capable of making bootable CD and then you can boot to it in the same way.

DISM – Step #10 – Optional Backup

xcopy /e /y “C:\winpe_x86″ E:\BACKUP_FOLDER_FOR_LATEST_BOOT_BUILD\

This step is optional, but I always like to keep a backup for the future. Also, if you ever need to create another bootable flash stick or CD you can simply go to your backup and grab the files.