OEMSCAN questions: Apply a default key / theme / wall

Hi,

I've got the preactivation working a treat now for XP Home SP3 on both HP and DIXONSXP, thanks to everyone for their help. I do have a couple of questions though:

1. In ...\OEM\Logos\DIXONSXP I have empty themes and [COLOR="#6400"]walls [/COLOR]folders and after setup the wallpaper was blank. However, when I set up the HP I got the wallpaper and themes copied over and then had to manually enable them (otherwise it just has the default XP wallpaper and theme). Is there any simple way to script it to set a default theme and/or wallpaper from the OEM folders just so that it's obvious they've been copied over correctly?

2. I noticed there are different contents.txt file formats, the one that goes with Sushi (OEMAUTO 1.8.6.4) is in this format:

Code:

47E62C15[GREATWALL]
4E00A936[emaxs]
5237B729[LENOVO]

The other one came with a different pack with OEMAUTO 1.8.1.2 and that's kept in this format:

Code:

[emaxs]                        4E00A936
[GREATWALL]                    47E62C15
[LENOVO]                       5237B729

As far as I can see the files are almost identical in every other respect - so does this reflect a version difference for OEMSCAN or does it not matter which way round the entries are displayed? The obvious reason for asking is that (as I did say on another thread) I got a bit confused when I first looked at it - you've got the Sushi packs, and the MR_Smartepants pack, and as far as I can see one of them has the OEM logos and themes in it and the other doesn't.

3. If OEMSCAN doesn't identify a valid SLP bios string, is there a way to get it to try the Technet keys as a default option or prompt for a product key if there isn't a generic MS key in the INI file that it can use?

For example, I noticed another thread where someone was trying to rig up XP on an Elonex. IIRC, they did ship some systems with XP Home and others with XP MCE but presumably the royalty OEM key for Elonex only applies to one of the two. It's alright having the key for XP Home but what if the system shipped with a MCE COA and you don't have a recovery disk to determine what the key should be?

Thanks again

 

Hi,

Yes, I know that but what depending on whether you use Sushi or MR_Smartepants' packs you have different considerations for adding / removing entries and keys from the pack and I initially wondered if there was some cunning bit of code that required them to be different.

Now I think they're probably just that way out of preference.
Here are the relevant differences between the two packs, as far as I can see, using the same AcerSystem entry as an example:

OEMSCAN 1.4.1 add-on (1.8.1.2/mr_smartepants) uses this convention:
27 folders under XP
5kb OEMSCAN.INI for XP Pro

ACER files:
Filesets pathname convention: FILESETS\XP\AcerSystem_717B6EF3
Logos path: Logos\AcerSystem


Multi-OEM 2.1 by Sushi uses this convention:
89 folders under XP
14kb OEMSCAN.INI for XP Pro

ACER files:
OEMBIOS Path: FILESETS\XP\717B6EF3
Logos path: Logos\AcerSystem

Basically, I want the best of both worlds - all 89 filesets supported, but where the folder naming convention is the same as Mr_Smartepants. The MR_Smartepants pack currently has 3 filesets for TOSHIBA, which stand out and you can easily see which is which - if you added them to the Sushi pack they would be buried in a list of 89 folders, and you would potentially need to scan through the INI files to work out which one's which.

In a perfect world I'd go for a properly heirarchical folder structure, e.g.

\Filesets\[Vendor]\Logos
\Filesets\[Vendor]\Filesets\[CRC1]
\Filesets\[Vendor]\Filesets\[CRC2]

 

Sorry but I think you're getting the wrong end of the stick.

The OEMBIOS side of it I'm perfectly happy about and I totally get how it works... it is the OEM LOGOS aspect of it that's bugging me, not least because it behaves inconsistently and I can't figure out how to control it.

If I run the setup CD on my HP computer it activates using the HP SLP and I get the OEM branding, but have to MANUALLY apply the wallpaper (which stays the XP default even though I can select the HP wallpaper from the pick list).
if I run the same disk on a DIXONSXP machine it applies DIXONSXP SLP and the OEM branding but there's no wallpaper at all (i.e. it turns the XP default wallpaper off). Lord knows what's going on...

The last time I built the recovery disk I used an older RVM add-on and the logos folder was OEM\LOGOS. If I use a different add-on altogether, the logos folder is also OEM\LOGOS. The multi-OEM INI file for Mr_Smartepants' add-on still says OEM\LOGOS.
But I just tested Mr_Smartepants addon 1.8.6.4 and it's now putting the logos into a completely different place: \I386\Logos-Full. The INI file still points to OEM\LOGOS.

Has this change been hard-coded into the OEMAUTO EXE file? Or is it stored in a script somewhere? If it's in a script, is it customizable? Is this change unique to the Mr_Smartepants add-on? Is it simply the case that the INI file in the add-on needs to be updated?

I don't know because that one specific aspect of the solution is, as far as I can see, COMPLETELY undocumented.

I can of course just assume it's now supposed to be like this but I do like to be sure of these things

 

Hi,

I have posted on that thread now - thanks for the advice.

EDIT: Confirmed this was actually a bug.