[dh28]

The Sysdiff Utility
Used to customize NT installation to one or more computers over the network. It records the differences between a installation files that have been added to an installation and a normal installation that has not had additions added. Functions:
Snap - Takes a snapshot of the state of files, directories, and the registry.
Diff - Records differences between a current system and a previous snapshot.
Apply - Apply data in a differences file to an installation.
Inf - Create an inf file from a diff file. The .inf file allows differences to be automatically applied to installations of NT from the server based share.
Dump - Allows review of the contents of a diff file.
If sysdiff is used to create an inf file and the difference files are put in the directory tree, %OEM$, you can use the command sysdiff.exe /apply in a file named cmdline.txt located in $OEM$. If this is done, the OemPreinstall line in the unattend file must be set to "Yes". Windows NT 3.5.1 used the Windiff utility which is still available in NT 4.0, but Sysdiff is used for unattended installation while Windiff may be used to compare files.
Beginning an Install
To install from the hard drive:
1. Copy i386 information from the i386 directory to a created i386 directory on the hard drive.
2. Run Winnt.exe or win32.exe
3. Nomally you will create three setup disks unless you skip this option.
4. The installation will create a temporary $WIN_NT$~LS or ~BS directory. If this file is gone at the end of the installation, the installation was completed.
5. When done you will reboot the system and the system will run 32 bit code.
Syntax:
sysdiff /snap [/log:logfile] snapshotfile
sysdiff /diff [/log:logfile] snapshotfile differencefile
sysdiff /inf [/u] snapshotfile oemroot
sysdiff /dump differencefile dumpfile
The "oemroot" location, above, is the directory with additional files and directories with custom installation. An emergency repair disk can be created at installation time or it can be made later using the RDISK.EXE utility.