Thanks for your comments about the article. I hope you'll contact Senapathy directly to discuss your questions with him, if you haven't already done so. (All the Innovators winners' email addresses appear in their articles.) --Anne Grubb, senior editor, Windows IT Pro

Anne11/20/2006 12:11:53 PM

To add to my previous comment; I have seen support issues generated based off of similar installation methods.
And while I have not looked at the code, but I wonder what would happen if you install a service pack after deploying in this fashion? How about updates?

Juxp0 11/13/2006 12:27:09 PM

OMG, nooooooo! You do realize that if you do this and deploy in this manner then you forfeit support from Microsoft:
828287 Unsupported Sysprep scenarios
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;828287

309283 HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Setup
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;309283
“5. Microsoft does not support running a HAL other than the HAL that Windows Setup would typically install on the computer. For example, running a PIC HAL on an APIC computer is not supported. Although this configuration may appear to work, Microsoft does not test this configuration and you may have performance and interrupt issues. Microsoft also does not support swapping out the files that are used by the HAL to manually change HAL types. “
(if support from Microsoft is not a concern, I wish you well if you go through with this.)

Juxp0 11/13/2006 12:17:48 PM