jimwreid

So I had to replace this hand-me-down computer I graciously received from a friend, which could actually play games newer than Morrowind but had always acted weird attempting to hibernate/sleep. Which later mysteriously restarted every 4-24 with 8hr being the average. Then believing myself not knowledgable enough to detect a rootkit left over from the coolest infection from a piece of Russia-ware I ever saw (I really wanted that torrent lol), I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do a rebuild of windows. But during that process I was too lazy to unplug my storage drive, and even tho I was like nah I won't choose the wrong drive after IDing the two, I f*n did it anyways and deleted the wrong partition. So I quickly went into BIOS but got sidetracked by setting InitDisplay option to peg mode and then she just refused to display anything at alll via hdmi/vga/dvi through onboard gfx but had no way to switch back. (known issue with rev 2.2 of said motherboard, but no resolution after clearing cmos via jumper or battery). So I bought a mobo+cpu combo along with an SSD this Jan and dropped it in my old tower along with pre-existing hardware. And it was Amazing. But Raid-0 by way of 2nd SSD would be more amazing (1'st re-install), then to restore a .net cluster-f* I just couldn't cope with (3rd install), and again after shaw cable had an outage in my building coincidentally the same night I was loading custom firmware to my router (wanted internet, try anything, so fourth install); its around this time I figure there must be a better way, SP1 integration and the Microsoft Windows Update packages burnt to a dvdr/ or USB using my copy of windows 7 x64 certainly couldn't be that difficult.... or ultimately time-consuming as it's been. I wanted to do a fresh install of win7 again with just the raid driver and chipset driver pre-loaded and was going to attempt making autoattend start file but some days of reading passed, and my list of wants grew, to include things like additional hotfixes and addons. Around this same time I became familiar with an app called Windows Update Downloader (MSFN) and later updated .UL user-submitted files. I then found the digitalriver site and X17-59465.iso, more dead-ends, and a growing need to understand how to create the magic that would be a fully unattended updated and modified windows 7-build. Because as an end-user who doesn't know about jargon like slipstreamed or VMware but tinkers where they naught belong, system failure is inevitable.. Somewhere along the line I managed to fix the complete mess of my last reinstall (only one that wasn't a fresh install - I lost my hive im not the user I should be or privileges were messed and still are, things don't install or uninstall and group policy was wonky), enough to the point where I actually get .net framework 4 to re-install via win update and windows to allow installs again and thus win toolkit. But then I've entered the period of doing very little, things get hairy, I didn't plan on reading so much and so after spending time on MSFN and other forums just. Reading. STUFF - dozens of little tabs launching per row for every launched-in-new-window off-site links I'm now here, at Wincert reading your posts about your first-time foray into the realm of what must-be to sys admins boring, and mundane routine. Like how I find preparing food at work.. meh. But those other staffers who I'm paired with during rushes, light up in delight making tzatziki and using the commercial lemon-wedger lol. It's going to give me some damn fine satisfaction and a major release of dopamine when I finally get this. Basically I just wanted to say Thanks for documenting your process, it's much appreciated. I don't get very long at any time to read up on this stuff so it will definitely save me time when I do. Cheers, and much obliged! *and to Lego and wincert and its posters