[Jayce]

Thanks for the info, Mak. I'll have to check it out when I get back to work in the morning.

I really hope this is the golden ticket. If we can crack this then it paves a solid road ahead, considering Vista is similar to 7 and 7 is in our future for next year. That way I get my feet wet with figuring this stuff out.

If I can get 1 functional machine rolling by tomorrow evening, I'll be in great shape to image over the next week. Then I can go on my vacation and actually relax.

EDIT - Not gonna lie, Mak, this is easily 100% more confusing than it was prior. I've read over these about 4 times and I'm still trying to get the jist of it. However, your links are also the most descriptive I've read so far. I just read it and within 3 sentences it brings up 10 steps I gotta do with scripts and xml files and certain "true" switches I need to adjust.

"To get a default profile, you need WSIM, but to get WSIM you need to run WAIK. But when you run WAIK, run this script cause there's a bug. Then edit the XML file (which I have no idea where it exists) and select a certain switch just to copy the profile."

But, ahh... it's friday...

[Jayce]

I'm beginning to understand this a little more based on more that I've been reading. Ultimately I think I know what I'm doing if I can at least figure out where the unattend.xml file comes from, cause I've followed exact directions from all of the guides I've read and according to what their directions are, I'm doing everything right, however I still cannot figure out where the unattend.xml file comes from.

I even found an unattend.xml file generator, so I gave that a shot and went to edit it accordingly, but the parameter I was to adjust didn't exist in it.

Monday morning headaches are the greatest...

[Jayce]

So... we had a meeting today and the decision was made that this was taking entirely too long to figure out, especially considering how many tutorials I found, guides I checked out... I even went as far as to find a link which was designed to build an unattend.xml file based on a questionaire, to which it also failed when implemented in Vista.

On a hunch, my boss suggested I put XP on and install the Vista chipset driver anyway and see if it runs. Surprisingly, it ran great. The only trick was it didn't install the graphics card driver with it too, but since it's a standard Nvidia 9200, it was easy enough to track down. All of the other hardware had native XP drivers (Realtek Audio, Broadcom NIC, etc... ) I'm currently running the system on XP Pro SP3 with everything installed. I still have a yellow splat from an "unknown device" which I'm almost positive it's one of 2 things: Either A - it's the touch-sensitive eject button, which means nothing to us since we'll be placing a 3rd party eject application in the quick launch... or B - it's the integrated SD card reader, which I don't think elementary students will be using anyway.

I'll continue to work on Vista to figure out these profiles until next summer when we are supposedly moving to Windows 7. But for the time being, this solution works, and surprisingly, it works **** good.

I'm still interested in hearing if anybody else out there is mass deploying Vista, because this issue isn't necessary resolved... it's just being worked around for the time being. Thanks everyone for the help I've gotten thus far.