Understand the process of building an OEM Pre-Load using Windows Millennium Edition
I have been out of the OEM pre-installation game for quite some time now so it’s hard sometimes to get access to new versions of OEM Microsoft product and have the time look them over. Recently, I was overjoyed to have access to the pre-load tools and disks for Windows Millennium Edition (supposedly the last in this line) and Windows 2000 Pro. Because of my past involvement in the industry (PC building) I am called upon to comment on the new OPK releases. I will talk about the Millenium edition in this article. And in this case, I’m sure the OEM license agreement restricts me from distributing specific binaries, so don’t expect downloads from this site.
Basic Concepts
The following terms are used throughout this article.
Auditing The task by which the manufacturer tests the Windows configuration and preinstallation programs during the final phase of the preinstallation process.
Classic Windows Welcome The set of screens that end users encounter the first time they run a computer preinstalled with prior versions of Windows. It includes the End User License Agreement (EULA), user name, and product key. Compare with Windows Welcome.
configuration set A group of files containing the configuration settings that control the preinstallation process and define the manufacturer’s custom information.
end user The customer who receives the computer that has Windows Millennium Edition preinstalled.
ISP sign-up offer The HTML file or set of files that appears during Windows Welcome. These files lead the end user through the process of establishing an account with an Internet service provider (ISP).
OEM (original equipment manufacturer) The company that manufactures and ships new computers with the Windows Millennium Edition operating system preinstalled under a license agreement with Microsoft Licensing, Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation.
OPK preinstallation wizard An OPK tool that provides an easy interface for creating the preinstallation configuration set.
preinstallation The process in which the OEM transfers the Windows Millennium Edition operating system, OEM-supplied drivers, and program files to a new computer by using OPK tools.
reference server A shared network resource or manufacturer’s CD that contains the reference system.
reference system The resource containing the tree structure that reflects all the software to be transferred to target computers as part of the preinstallation process.
target computer The end-user computer on which Windows Millennium Edition is to be preinstalled. Windows The Microsoft Windows operating system product, including any current service releases.
Windows Welcome The initial startup sequence for Windows Millennium Edition. Through a series of full-screen, HTML-based pages, Windows Welcome offers end users an easy and streamlined way of getting a new personal computer that is running Windows started and connected to the World Wide Web.
Looking at what’s new
There are quite a few new developments with this old standard OPK process. The following is a list of things that you should expect to run into while working with this new Operating System:
Enhanced Driver Support in an OEM drivers path
If you had previously tried to auto install third-party drivers using an .inf, you know how much of a pain this is in the OPK process. In the past, if you were after creating an image (while not installing the third-party driver) you would place an .inf in the C:\WINDOWS\INF directory and the source files accordingly. The following registry key: HKLM,”SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OtherDevicePath” allows you to specifically another path or multiple paths to these .INF files.
OPK Wizard automation
The OPK wizard now supports automated creation of configuration sets using the /a (automated) and /b switches. Given you have an .inf file created for this, you can create a configuration set quickly.
Real-Mode support
Windows ME seems to be the first version of Windows 9x that will removed support for real-mode. This means that there is not real-mode driver loads, and booting to DOS is history also.. ? The OPK relies on real-mode heavily, so MS has provided version of winboot.sys and command.com to allow real-mode operation.
Enhanced Mode
The Windows ME OPK now offers an enhanced mode, this allows you to install the system and get into audit mode with no hardware specific information and 8.3 file names. When finished auditing, the tools lfnbk and preptool are run on first user boot to restore long filenames and hardware detection. The advantages of doing this are numerous. You can create fully compliant ISO9660 CDs that can boot into Windows, you can XCOPY the entire OS to a drive if you wish, under this configuration mode.
Manual Auditing
The manual audit mode we were so used to in Windows 95/98 using CTRL + SHIFT + F3 is now back. This ability was removed in Windows 98 Second Edition’s OPK.
Silent Plug and Play Enumeration
If you wish the user (or auditor) not to see plug and play device detections, this option can be set in the registry to allow this. This is very useful for automation of the OPK process.
What’s not in the Windows ME OPK
Multi Lingual Mode
No support for multiple languages during audit mode?
Personal Web Server
This is no longer an option in Windows ME. It cannot be installed.
Utilities
The utilities MKCDBOOT (make bootable CD), DRVCOPY.INF (copy files to hard disk) are not longer provided.
Wallpaper
This may have happened in the Wind98se OPK, but adding wallpaper to the desktop became large and unruly unless you were using a reference system, a welcome removal for usability sake.
These are the new features and the removed features, now its time to create the Windows ME preinstallation.