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With dd if you have a 80 hd, you now have an 80 gig image. Gzip or bzip2 might take it down some, but it will still be insanely large.

If you insist on using cloning (imho, bad idea) you can use the free ntfsclone, which is part of the Linux NTFS project. With gzip it will get down to about a gig.

Whenever I have to reinstall someone's Windows system, the first thing I do after activating it and applying all Windows updates is to make a clone with ntfsclone. I then build a Linux-based restore dvd for them so they (and I) won't have to deal with activation the next time.

If you're looking to install more than one computer, though, reconsider using imaging. Spend a weekend learning how to use Unattended, AutoIt, and secedit/a After using this for a little, you're just cringe when someone suggests imaging.

Looks like the free AutoIt would help.

Also see AutoIt Script home page.

• CKRename - Tool to mass rename files in a folder. Works very well for renaming MP3s.
• WinMerge (Use latest RC under beta builds) - Compare document, script, HTML, etc content versions (compares what has changed from revision to revision).
• XXCopy - Extended version of XCopy. This is a great utility for scripting file backups from one drive to another.
• ISOBuster - Open CD/DVD ISOs, BINs, IMGs, etc without having to burn them. Can extract files without burning as well.
• Vim - Improved version of the vi editor.
• IrfanView - Batch Image Processing and viewer (much like ACDSee, but FREE!).
• Diskeeper Lite - An updated version of the disk defragmenter that comes with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. This version does a better job of defragging the drive and shows you more information. The site isn't the manufacturer's, but the download does come directly from them. ExecSoft doesn't have this listed on their site anywhere anymore.
• Locate - Windows version of a linux utility. Creates a database of every file on your drives. You can then search and get instant results.
• xvi32 Hex Editor - Very nice hex editor.
• 7-Zip - A freeware file archiver. It supports all of the popular formats (ZIP, CAP, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB) as well as its own format, 7z.
• Max Lister - Create text lists of files in folders. For example, it's useful for an mp3 list.

Installation / Automation

• InnoSetup - Create your own EXE installers.
• ISTool - A GUI front-end for creating InnoSetup installer scripts.
• WinINSTALL LE 2003 - Create your own MSI installers. Also edit existing MSI installers (change options, add/remove components, etc).
• KiXtart - Advanced batch processing language. Commonly used for logon scripts but can be used to accomplish many tasks (comparable to using VBScript and WELL documented).
• AutoIt - Create scripts to send keys to applictions. Commonly used to "silently" install applictions that don't natively support silent install switches.

Multimedia Tools

1) 7-zip. Like WinZip but Open source!

2) Mozilla. 'nuff said

3) SciTe. Excellent text editor. Open Source

4) AutoIt. Scripting/automation language for Windows, also open source.

5) FinePrint. Best shareware Ever. N-up printing, universal print preview, extract to image, text, metafile

6) rjhExtensions Add "Copy Path to Clipboard" and "Command Prompt" to right-click menu.

7) IrfanView good freeware image viewer

8) Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1--because I hate 6.0 and GSView is not quite good enough yet :(

9) Microsoft Office.... yeah I know, I know

10) TweakUI

I've had problems getting technical support for WinBatch. That was a long time ago, maybe things have changed now. There were so many small and big problems that I stopped using WinBatch.

I haven't checked out AutoIt, a free alternative, apparently. From the home page:

"AutoIt is a simple tool that can simulate key presses, mouse movements and window commands (maximize, minimize, wait for, etc.) in order to automate any windows based task (or even windowed DOS tasks)."

Personally, I used to have to submit weekly reports each week, in word format. Usually this was just a bunch of text that needed to have a pretty header and footer attached to it. What I would've loved to do is keep a list of things I'd done that week in a text file on my harddrive, then have a cron job that ran a perl script to convert the incoming text into a word document, then email it to my boss.

WSH and Office's VBA implementations can easily handle this. The way I usually handle this sort of thing is to write the data in plain text (or CSV for Excel) and then use VBA code to format it and make it pretty. I've done just this sort of thing with both Word and Excel using VBScript on an ASP page. I've gotten out of scripting lately, but .NET may make it even easier to do this sort of thing.

You could even have Outlook email it for you, though it'd probably complain that something was trying to send email on your behalf. That could be solved with Push The Freakin' Button, or by doing a direct SMTP connection to your mail server.

If your VBScript isn't up to par, then AutoIt is a decent macro program that couldn't also do what you want, but it wouldn't be as reliable or robust...plus it can't do it in the background. I have had to use it for progams that had no scripting interface though, and was thankful that it existed.

How long before someone rights a nifty utility to monitor window titles and soon as one that has that dialog box pop up, does a sendkeys and clicks it automatically?

Not long, I'd suspect. Note that this program was out way before this debacle, and has many othe ruses, but should suffice for this particular case as well.

AutoIt running in a loop checking for the window would probably work too...and of course, a real programmer should have no trouble with dismissing these buttons...the only question, is will they be sued for trying?

I'm sure there is a need for a mature, full featured, easy to use, cross platform installer that's open source. Unfortunately I don't know of one nor am I capable of creating one right now - although it's a good idea. Most of what you found in your search are installers for MySQL, Apache, PHP, etc. What I do know is that InstallAnywhere installers always seem to work on whatever platform I'm using (Win, Lin, Mac). They have an unlimited evaluation period and I'm sure you could get some nice extras by paying some money. I also suggest looking at AutoIt which is free (soon to be open source). It can be real nice when working around quirks in Windows.

Of course, if you use Microsoft's Software Update Service, then it's basically like running your own Windows Update server...and it's a free addon to Win2K servers. Client side is very similar to the Automatic Updates feature introduced in 2000 SP3 (or XP SP1)...but instead of checking MS's server it checks your own. Admins have control over what updates will be applied.

There are also 3rd party tools like HFNetChk Pro (with a free Lite version, but it has major limitations as far as rollouts are concerned) and UpdateExpert. They basically simplify mass scanning and rollout to many machines.

Of course, for ISP's the only thing I can think of would be to just download the files and host on a website...then educate your customers.

Alternatively a cheaper solution would be to use AutoIt which isn't capable of recording but it is very easy to use and works quite well.

What? You can write scripts that run on Windows? How does the script know where to move the mouse?

With AutoIt , of course.

In all fairness, MS actually has pretty powerful scripting built in through Windows Script Host. You can pretty much do anything with WSH that you can do in front of the PC, and a few more that you can't do in front of the PC. It's just a huge gaping security hole, and not as easy as shell scripting (IMO). But any good Windows admin should know about it and how to use it.

Good system administators are lazy and try to automate everything so they don't have to work.

Now, now, let's be nice. Good system administrators automate whatever they can so that they can focus their efforts on more important things... Like benchmarking new GL drivers. "Weeee! I've never reached 85 fps on GLQuake before!"

As for my experience, I've never needed to prepare to install any package on multiple *nix machines before, but I've had an okay time on Windows with AutoIt automating software installations.

For scripted control of setup and execution of Windows programs, including tasks in DOS windows, C Styled Scripting seems excellent.

Auto-It does this, and it is free, but it is not open source: http://www.hiddensoft.com/AutoIt/

Wilson WindowWare's WinBatch does this, and it is comprehensive, but it is not-free shareware, not open source, and I have had problems with poor documentation and poor technical support: http://www.windowware.com/


Question: People who write open source software often pick poor names for their work. Why is that?