On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 11:53:39 -0500, William B. Lurie wrote:

why the 3 XP installation Cds all have .dl_ files
and yet yours appears to have .dll files.

My CD is a retail XP CD. The files in the i386 folder are shown as .dl_
files. This compressed form is normal and expected. The files get expanded
during installation. The compressed files can be manually expanded if
necessary but this is usually done on a file by file basis for repairs.

Here's the URL again for the article that explains how to manually expand
files if you missed it before.

Description and Explanation of a Cabinet File
http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp

As for your mystery CD....
An OEM CD that restores an image is not installing anything when you use
it. It's not even an OEM restore CD that uses a customized install. It is
simply a copy of a master hard drive (very much the same as the one you
created last week with Drive Image). Then eMachines plops that image onto
the hard drives of systems built with the same configuration as the machine
with the "master" hard drive.

Apparently they have added an i386 folder to the CD since you can see that
when you examine the CD. This folder is normally supplied by the OEMs and
even copied to the hard drive to add/remove components and to do small
touchup repairs -- like reinstalling Paint if it gets broken.

I really don't understand why the MS Fax files are lacking on the eMachine
CD either. I'm not familiar with the options given to the OEMs and do not
have access to that information.

I can see them using a script or program that adds the i386 folder to their
image. But I don't understand how they could end up with an i386 folder
that does not included the needed items for the fax component. Fax is an
optional component - one of the few things that XP setup does not install
by default. It's part of the actual XP setup. It's not even stuck in a
separate folder like the "NT Backup/WinXP Home" situation.

There is a missing link somewhere between the OEM setup that eMachine uses
to create the master images for their computers and the restore CD that
they deliver to their customers. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is.

--
Sharon F
MS-MVP ~ Windows XP Shell/User