It is written for Korn Shell (AIX Standard) and uses Perl for the time translation and some “bc” maths. Its not the most elegant of scripts but it works. It has two parts - One is the main script to run as a cron job etc (root privilidges required) click here, the second part is a Perl script which requires Perl modules “Convert-ASN1-0.22″ and “perl-ldap-0.39″ click here for download. You will need to change some lines within both scripts but I have noted where changes need to made. Then setup checkpasswordexpire.ksh as cronjob and you should be away laughing!

While I was copying them to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu they still wouldn’t show up. There is actually a complementary Registry key which makes the magic happen. So without further ado: How to set Pinned Start Menu Items for Default Profile in Windows 7

* Using your regular admin/user account setup the Pinned Start Menu Items how you would like them to look.

* Copy: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu TO: C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu

* EXPORT the Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage2 to a REG File. Load the Hive C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT and import those entries into the appropriate place within NTUSER.DAT. (So if you load your hive under the key HKEY_USERS\Test you will have to adjust the REG file to say: HKEY_USERS\TEST\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage2 instead of:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage2 for the merge to work correctly.

* You can then actually make further changes to the default users registry, once your done unload the hive and bob’s your uncle (Your done)

This post was inspired by this blog post

Your friends will still be able to see your friends list but people who aren’t your friends can’t! Yay!!

The problem lies in the HAL Type of the PC that was captured and then WDS finds the HAL type for the PC asking for an image and if one doesn’t match then you will most probably get the error: “There are no images available”

My scenario was that we had a generic image built and working for Single CPU and MultiCPU PCs but only the Multiple / Newer PCs could see the image in WDS - that is because the HAL type was “Advanced Configuration and power interface (ACPI) PC” but these older PCs were being recognised as Uniprocessor HAL Types.

The solution: Get the image onto the Older PC type (via Ghost or Clonezilla etc) login to the system. Download DevCon and extract into C:\Windows or any other %PATH% variable you like.
Then run:
devcon sethwid @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 := +acpiapic_up !acpiapic_mp
devcon update c:\windows\inf\hal.inf acpiapic_up

Reboot and Login two times then Sysprep and capture again!

Hopefully your good to go!

Reference: http://www.ngohq.com/processors/11891-how-to-update-the-hal-without-reinstalling-windows.html

Keywords: WDS, Force HALs, Force HAL, Windows Deployment Services, WDS, ACPI Multiprocessor PC, acpiapic_up, acpiapic_mp, No Images after Capture, Change HAL Type

Copy the visio files to the PC in question
Edit the setup.ini file for visio located in files\setup\setup.ini add:

[Options]
; The option section is used for specifying individual Installer Properties.
USERNAME=Your Name
COMPANYNAME=Your Company

Then fire up a command prompt and execute command:

PSEXEC \\PCNAME -S -E -I MSIEXEC /PASSIVE /QB /I C:\TEMP\visio2003\VISSTD.MSI PIDKEY=12345abcde98765zyxwv34567

PCNAME Being the name of the remote PC
C:\TEMP\visio2003\VISSTD.MSI being the path to the VISSTD.MSI package
12345abcde98765zyxwv34567 being your Visio license key