![]() Customize Windows 1. Image in Audit Mode with Sysprep Windows 1. Installation & Upgrade Tutorials. Published by. Finnish but not finished. The latest PC gaming hardware news, plus expert, trustworthy and unbiased buying guides. ![]() Location: A Finnish ex- pat in Germany. Posts: 1. 1,6. 98. Information. First a quote from Microsoft Tech. Net: Understanding Audit Mode. When Windows boots first time, the computer can start in one of the following two modes: Windows Welcome Mode. Windows Welcome, also named Out- Of- Box Experience (OOBE), is the first user experience. SSD Interface Comparison: PCI Express vs SATA (And not only one, but two reviews of the Plextor M6e!) (FREE SSD GIVEAWAY INFO AT THE END!) Introduction: Remember. What is a hard drive? A hard drive is the central storing point for all of your computer's data / files. How much data can be stored is indicated by the amount of.
![]() No Drive Letter in the Windows Explorer Drive Letter hidden. Windows can be configured to hide drive letters in the Windows Explorer. Under XP the settings can be.![]() ![]() Windows Welcome prompts end users to customize their Windows installation. End users create user accounts, read and accept the Microsoft. By default, immediately after installation, Windows. When you use audit mode, the system does not have to apply settings in Windows Welcome. OEMs and corporations should use audit mode to complete their manual customizations before shipping a computer to an end user. The Audit Mode, although originally intended to be used in corporate environment in preparing Windows images for deployment (a fancy geek word , installing same image on multiple computers) is a nice and flexible tool also for private users, easy to use to customize Windows. As you can enter Audit Mode before any user accounts are created, computer named and networks joined, you can prepare your All Inclusive Windows image to be used instead of the traditional install media. All customizations are done with native Windows System Preparation Tool (Sysprep). There are a few instances where an absurdly quick but small drive is useful. A RAM disk can make for a great cache drive. Hardcore gamers might use a very large RAM. To instruct Sysprep we create a so called unattended answer file, a script file in XML file format listing everything Sysprep needs to know to modify Windows as we want to. The answer file command syntax is quite complicated, luckily we don't have to write it manually but can instead use the Windows System Image Manager (SIM), free tool from Microsoft which is part of the likewise free Windows Assesment & Deployment Kit (ADK). This tutorial only covers some basics of Windows Image Customization in Audit Mode using Sysprep with answer files created with SIM, however it gives you enough to get started to get just the Windows you'd like to have. Have fun .(Videos originally posted in Windows 1. Ten Forums members - Windows 1. Forums)UPDATE: Below video will show well the process works in Windows 1. Anniversary Update: Full video description in this post: Windows 1. Image - Customize in Audit Mode with Sysprep - Page 4. Windows 1. 0 Forums Note. Please notice before proceeding! Disconnect your technician machine used for customizing the Windows image completely from all networks before starting the installation. Be sure that you install Windows 1. When booted to Audit Mode desktop (Part Two), you can connect the machine to the network to download and install Windows ADK and software. As Windows is not activated when booted to Audit Mode when following these guidelines you cannot customize the theme. Use a Windows themepack file instead, for instance creating the theme (colors, backgrounds, sounds, screensaver) you'd like to use for the default user profile on another computer and applying the themepack file on the technician machine before the Sysprep. You can now run Sysprep normally and without issues. Contents: Install Windows. Perform Windows installation normally as told in this tutorial until you reach the Settings dialog, first dialog after the last reboot during the installation. Instead of choosing custom or express settings, press and hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys, then still holding the these keys down press F3: 1. Release the keys, Windows will now reboot to Audit Mode. Entering Audit Mode. After the reboot Windows will enter the Audit Mode using the built- in administrator account. The Windows System Preparation Tool (later in tutorial Sysprep) dialog is automatically shown when Windows enters the Audit Mode. For our purposes now we need to close it without running it. Click Cancel to close the dialog: Install Windows ADK & SIM3. Open Internet Explorer (Spartan does not work in Audit Mode) and go to Kits and Tools for Windows 1. Click Download the Windows ADK for Windows Technical Preview link at the bottom of the page, save the installer and run it when done. Accept the default install location, click Next: 3. Click Next, thereafter accept the license by clicking Accept: 3. Select what to install. Personally I want to have the ADK completely installed which is why I usually select everything which is an almost 7 GB download taking some time, but for the purpose of this tutorial we only need the Deployment Tools, a small under 7. MB download. Make your choice and click Install: 3. The installation does not take very long if you selected the Deployment Tools only. Wait that the installation is finished and close the dialog. If you decided to download and install everything, it takes time as I mentioned above. Just minimize the dialog and let it run in the background, you can continue from next step and let installation run by itself. Customize Windows. When you create a user account (profile) in Windows, system needs to know what should be done, which content should be created for the new user. Windows gets this information from the Default User Profile, located in a hidden system folder Default in main profile folder Users: Reading the contents of this default profile Windows then knows to create personal folders like Documents, Pictures, Music and so on, knows which theme, wallpaper, screensaver and colors to use, which homepage and favorites and so on. If the default profile is not modified prior to finalizing the Windows installation, all new users get the default theme, colors, favorites and so on. Audit Mode and Sysprep give us the opportunity to modify this default user profile. Everything (almost!) done now will be saved to modified and customized default profile when we finally run the Sysprep later on in this tutorial. See our Ten Forums tutorial for customizing the default user profile for more information, below only a short list of what can and cannot be done: Default User Profile - Customize in Windows 1. Please notice that for purpose of this tutorial you should only do what's told in Part Two of said customization tutorial. Examples of what can be modified: - Windows wallpaper, icons, theme, colors and sounds- Screensaver- Taskbar location (bottom, left, top, right)- File Explorer settings like icon spacing, ribbon ON / OFF, hide / show hidden items, view as, group / sort, additional panes and so on- Desktop icon spacing and size- Software installed now will be available to all users. Examples of what can't be modified: - Pinned icons (Taskbar and Start) will not be copied to default profile- Start Menu and Start Screen will remain default, cannot be modified. My customizations for this tutorial, I installed Office 2. XBMC, VLC Player, Adobe Reader, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Maxthon browsers and 7. Zip compression tool. I set my favorite Windows forums as favorites in Internet Explorer and its homepage as www. File Explorer to use details view, show ribbon and item check boxes, and finally placed my usual shortcuts on desktop. The command: Code: Find- Package - Name Adobe. Reader, 7- Zip, VLC, XBMC, Opera, Google. Chrome, Firefox, Maxthon - All. Versions . This list is then piped to a grid view table, the - Pass. Thru switch lets me select my preferred version for each program. This selection is then piped to Install- Package cmdlet which installs all software I selected. Interested in One. Get? See the tutorial: https: //www. Consult the default user profile tutorial mentioned above for more information what can and can't be done now. Microsoft Account synced profile customizations void any default user profile customizations. Create an Answer File. This part is for the real . If you are a . 5. The original install media must be present now. If you have removed the USB or ejected the DVD when using a disk, insert it now. If you are installing Windows 1. USB) you can skip this step, but if you are using a non- writable media (DVD or write protected USB) you need to copy the Windows install. I recommend the Desktop. Open your Windows 1. File Explorer, go to its Sources folder, find install. Desktop: 5. 3) The Windows ADK we installed in Part Three has for sure now finished the installation. Open Start Menu > All apps > W > Windows Kits folder, click Windows. System Image Manager to open it. We start by creating a new Answer File: 5. An Answer File is based on Windows Image which we want to modify. As we are creating one for Windows 1. Windows image (install. Step 5. 2. Click Yes, browse to and open the install. Windows needs to create a so called catalog file now. Accept this by clicking Yes. Generating the catalog file takes some time, go and get a beer while it will be created : 5. When done the SIM window shows you what the answer file contains at the moment (#1 in screenshot below, titles only as we have just started), and the components and packages which can be added (#2). When we add a component we can modify it in Properties pane (#3): 5. In an answer file all various components and instructions are given in one of 7 different passes. We need now to add and modify something in Pass 4, Specialize. Open the Components tree in Windows Image pane (bottom left), browse to amd. Click the plus (+) sign to open this component's subtree: 5. Here I have named the computer as Ten. Forums. PC, set Registered. Organization as Ten Forums and Registered. Owner as Kari: 5. If you want to you can add for instance manufacturer, PC model, support information and such. This information will be shown in Windows System window after the installation is finished: 5. When you have finished modifying the answer file, validate it (check for errors): 5. Here's result of validating my answer file. Nothing to worry, it only shows some warnings that because values were not modified they will not be included in answer file, Sysprep using default values instead (yellow highlight) and some legacy values which can no longer be modified in Windows 1. How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 RC after installation. AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) enables native command queuing and hot- plugging through SATA host controllers (Serial- ATA) for your hard drives. In many scenarios, it enables more efficient multi- tasking. Vista was the first Windows OS to support AHCI out of the box, whereas Windows 7 does the same. But an issue with AHCI is that if you install the OS without enabling AHCI in the BIOS, enabling it after installation will render your OS unusable. This is because Windows disable the AHCI driver since it is not needed during the installation. There is one way to fix this, although you need to have knowledge of registry editing. The detailed steps from Microsoft are as follows: To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps: Exit all Windows- based programs. Click Start, type Regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER. If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY. When you log in to Windows again, you’ll notice the installation of drivers for AHCI. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation. I’ve simplified the steps by Microsoft by exporting the registry key. Just download the following file and run it. You’ll still need to go through the steps of restarting your computer and enabling AHCI in the BIOS. Hopefully, you’ll find a somewhat noticeable improvement in multitasking, especially if you’re a notebook user. Of course with the variety of PC hardware, experience many vary. Disclaimer: Beware, though, you’re responsible on your own for messing around with the registry. This guide comes with no warranties if your computer blows up, gets angry at you, stops working or just shows a Blue Screen of Death.
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