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You'd think something like this would be easy... but it has been a difficult journey so far. But anyway, I am simply trying to be able to run the MSDN installer from the command line, in an unattended mode.
I can mostly make it work with this gem:
msiexec /qb /i F:\msdn.msi SETUP_EXE=yes
(assuming F: is a CD or network share or someplace containing the MSDN install package.) That will always install it into C:\Program Files\MSDN, and I may or may not want it there. I want to be able to specify a target directory on the command line.
After some poking in the MSI package, I tried this, but to no avail:
InstallFolder=C:\Foo
I then found I can specify this property to make it work:
MSDN_QTR.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8=C:\Foo
 There has to be a better way. I am worried that the identifier there is arbitrary and might change on me when the next MSDN comes out. Does anyone know a better or more reliable way of doing this??
Sometimes I feel like I'm a USB printer in a parallel universe.
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Do you have a copy of ORCA or msi2xml?
This would let you look in the tables, and you could examine different MSIs from say, Jan and April, and see if the install folder is different. This will be in the properties table somewhere.
The trailing bit looks suspiciously like a GUID, so it may well change from release to release...
Steve S
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Yes, I found it using ORCA. I should probably look in the April release (I used this one from the January release) to see if it changes... if it does, I guess I'm hosed. 
Sometimes I feel like I'm a USB printer in a parallel universe.
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This is odd. The PC I gutted last week, replacing the PII motherboard with a 3GHz P4, runs as slow as the old one. A bit of exploration revealed that the C: drive is operating in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode. That explains the slow operation, but none of the Technet Knowledge Base solutions applies to this unit. I've sorted through about 40 of the articles, and all talk about specific situations which are not applicable. Any other ideas?
Some people think of it as a six-pack; I consider it more of a support group.
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Roger Wright wrote:
replacing the PII motherboard with a 3GHz P4
I can't say I've ever used a P4 as a motherboard for a PII system... 
Seriously though, you might want to check the bios see if there is something in there. (Assuming this was the Win 98 machine you were talking about earlier) Could it be something with some of the P4 features that aren't compatible with 98? Is hyperthreading enabled?
Matt Newman
All rise for the honorable Judge Stone Cold Steve Austin - From Dilbert Episode 30
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Matt Newman wrote:
Could it be something with some of the P4 features that aren't compatible with 98?
I doubt it, as I've seen a few systems using a P4 with Win98SE. Things just got weirder, too. I was working on another Win98SE PC today for an entirely different customer, and that one is running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode, too! What the heck is going on here, some kind of plague?
Some people think of it as a six-pack; I consider it more of a support group.
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MS-DOS Compatibility Mode can sometimes be caused by a boot-sector virus. Use a virus scanner.
My other suggestion is to use a modern operating system
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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Although searching Technet has been futile, Google came up with some interesting tidbits. For one, if the PCI controller supports serialization between channels, and a CD-ROM driver is loaded from AUTOEXEC/CONFIG, the hard drive is forced to operate on Compatibility Mode. Another is a damaged MBR caused by an earlier virus infection - and I know that both PCs have had virus problems before. A third possibility is that, at some time in the past, the system failed to intialize 32-bit protected mode drivers for the drive controller. Once that happens, a NoIDE value is added to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\IOS, and several entries of BAD_IDE are written in the Registry. If these are manually removed the system will attempt to detect a 32-bit driver again, but as long as they remain it will never try again.
Some people think of it as a six-pack; I consider it more of a support group.
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I am not sure what the problem could be, but I am unable to bring up the IIS
web site properties. It won't come for the default web site as well as for
sub-webs. I have IIS 5.1 on XP Professional SP 1. I did install PHP earlier
today and am not sure if that might have caused any issues.
Any help is appreciated.
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog);
My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
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Sounds like maybe PHP's isapi dll was not installed correctly. You could try reinstalling php maybe that would clear it up. If not you could try uninstalling php then IIS, reinstalling IIS and PHP.
Matt Newman
All rise for the honorable Judge Stone Cold Steve Austin - From Dilbert Episode 30
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Nishant S wrote:
I was hopin' there'd be an easier way out
Yeah, it would be my last resort too but I couldn't find anything else.
Matt Newman
All rise for the honorable Judge Stone Cold Steve Austin - From Dilbert Episode 30
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Hi to all,
i have developed a Remote Desktop application.
The server in a Windows Service.
When i restart the PC, i send ctrl+alt+del from client, and then i must send the authntication data.
I'm not able to capture the login screen.
Can anyone suggest me a function to capture the login screen, or how i can log in my system by-passing the windows login window (not auto-login)
Thanks in advance
Davide Vitiello
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Some time I can't delete files (avi) and I get the well known message:
Cannot delete file abcd.avi. It is used by an another process. Try closing any process using this file and try again"
But unfortunately, I don't have no process using this file, and trying to delete it at windows boot up don't succeed any more.
Do anyone have a utility forcing deleting.
thanks,
H.
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There's a handy program called "WhosLocking" that I found using Google a couple years ago. Once it's installed it's available in the context menu of explorer - right click on a file and select WhosLocking. It displays all processes that are currently using the target file, and double-clicking on a process name shuts it down. I've used it for a long time to get rid of files that I can't delete by normal means, but you have to use some judgement in using it. Some processes can't be stopped without making your system unstable, so you really have to know what you're doing. What I usually do is determine what program I want to shut down, locate it, and view its properties to see if it's something critical to Windows before I kill it.
Some people think of it as a six-pack; I consider it more of a support group.
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Hi,
thx.
I tried it, but unfortunately, it pointed to the files as not locked by any process. In the other hand I still wasn't able to delete them because of the same reason as before.
Very strange for me. sort of voodoo
Haim
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Ok,
I found the utilisty @ www.sysinternals.com.
It not only do delete any file, but is deleting it using DoD 5220.22-M secure file deleting requirement.
For all those who need it, it may be found at:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/sdelete.shtml
Enjoy it
and thanks to Mark Russinovich for this great utility
Haim
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simply go to dos and type this
forcedel /S <filename>
I know it works on win2k have not tried it on windows xp
Win32newb
"Programming is like sex, make one mistake and you have to support it for a long time"
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I've had my Windows XP autoupdate downloading a critical patch every single day for the past week or so. I install the patch and the very next day it downloads again. I'm not 100% certain it's the same patch, but I'm pretty sure it is.
So I've come up with two possiblities.
1. I've got a virus that keeps erasing files from the critical patch, forcing it to re-downlad every day.
2. The critical patch is actually a virus, which re-downloads itself after the virus is removed by my scanner everyday.
I've scanned for viruses several times with the latest dat files and everything appears to be clean. So what's going on?
I also keep getting emails from system admins around the world saying my email was blocked because it contained unsafe attachments. The attachment is listed, but not contained in the email. These are all emails I haven't sent, to the best of my knowledge. They're to people and companies that aren't even in my address book. I can only assume it's someone I know who's got a virus on their machine that is sending itself out with my name on it, from their address book.
Any thoughts on these two issues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Kevin Ranville
"Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad." - Hamlet
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For a while, I got some emails from sysadmins saying my email was blocked. I traced it to my use of my un-obscured email address in some MS newsgroups.
One of the worms, I cannot recall which, was in the habit of harvesting email addresses from those newsgroups, and then using them in its emails. Quite nasty.
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Kevnar wrote:
I've had my Windows XP autoupdate downloading a critical patch every single day for the past week or so. I install the patch and the very next day it downloads again. I'm not 100% certain it's the same patch, but I'm pretty sure it is.
I had a similar problem once. Check for the next couple of days to see if it is the same patch. Find the Knowledge Base article related to it (KB999999 number will be in the title), go to the Knowledge Base and download the patch. Manually install it and the problem should be resolved.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So i had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
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Michael Martin wrote:
go to the Knowledge Base and download the patch. Manually install it and the problem should be resolved.
Okay, it turns out it is the same patch everyday. KB835732. I installed it manually from microsoft.com, but it's still downloading itself everyday.
Perhaps I need a better virus scanner, or maybe a better firewall.
"Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad." - Hamlet
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If you have a Norton Antivirus 2003/2004 software, try
updating the virus definitions. Norton Antivirus will
detect any new viruses or the virus that keeps on re-download the same patch. If you don't have this software,
I suggest you purchase it. Better than any virus scanners.
I also had encountered the same problem as you. But with Norton Antivirus(updated Virus Definitions) , it automatically detected and cleared the annoying virus which keep repeatedly download the same patch.
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My son's computer runs XP Home and has corrupted the SYSTEM registry so it won't boot.
For reasons I won't detail I can't use the files from Windows\repair as described in KB article 307545.
What I want to know is: if I do a reinstall over the existing system will I subsequently be able to recover the backed-up registry files as described in Parts Two and Three of that article?
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
The opinions expressed in this communication do not necessarily represent those of the author (especially if you find them impolite, discourteous or inflammatory).
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I really dont know under which category this post should belong...My apologies....
As a company's intern, I was asked to research on this to see if I can do it. Basically, I am suppose to find a way for the network adminstrator to detect ALL printers connected to client machines and store the info (client machine name, printer model, etc) in a database. This includes all USB and parallel printers.
I'm not really sure how to do this. My boss suggests using a "logon script" that automatically detect printers when logging on. For instance, when a Windows user logs on to the domain, some script should try to detect all locally connected printers on the client's machine and report that back to the central database.
So my question is "Is this possible?". And if so, what programming/scripting language should I use? Perl, PHP, etc? Can I even do this using a .NET language?
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