Hello
Anyway, on to the second attempt, next day:
After inspecting the Preset XML, these two updates aren't found in it, but all there is are absolute filepaths to the msu updates in the update cache.
I don't know what happened exactly, I saved the preset before any crashing or anything happened, so these updates should have been enqueued, unless NTLite was doing a silent preset modification or I forgot and accidentially saved the preset again when I shouldn't.
Anyway there's no prompt to re-add the updates from online when loading a preset in case something is missing, perhaps that could be done in future.
Moreover, the way presets save update info could perhaps be improved, the preset should include the update ids that were staged for enqueue, whether or not they're part of an update cache. If there's an additional custom cache folder that could be it's own XML parameter. The processing step, or a secondary verification step would take care of that, determining whether an enqueued update is part of a cache or not. Or the process of loading up a preset should perhaps involve those actions more closely, the ones I did when adding updates to the enqueue list for the first time, I guess the preset loading step does not involve triggering the "Add latest online updates" function.
NTLite seems to have an internal list of all the updates, because it was able to list and enqueue them without the internet, only after processing it figured out it couldn't connect, but I'm not sure on this because it might have been a different domain that wasn't blocked, but only the download domain.
Another question is, if the 2 updates weren't part of the preset when I loaded it, I don't know, how did NTLite know they were missing?
- 1. I haven't used NTLite for quite a while so I've installed it fresh on my new main machine a few days ago and extended the license.
- 2. I picked the en_windows_7_ultimate_with_sp1_x64_dvd_u_677332 as the source and proceeded with making my edits.
- 3. I used the update tab to fetch updates from online. It did so successfully.
- 4. Saved my custom preset and proceeded to Process and make ISO. (I have autosaved presets autoloading disabled)
- 5. Two error dialogs appeared. One said that NTLite crashed and I should check logs and dumps, it only had an OK button. I did not click.
- 6. Another error dialog said that there was an error connecting to the remote host.
- 7. I had my custom router and firewall settings which were blocking some windows update download domains. I adjusted network settings and hit Retry, without hitting the OK button in the crash dialog message. I wanted to see what would happen and troubleshoot it. From my windows experience I know sometimes half of a program crashes and if you don't confirm the crash dialog message things may still keep working until later down the line. Or it could have been a dummy mistaken error message.
- 8. It proceeded to download updates, but got stuck on two. kb3156016 and kb4539602 - it kept saying it's "connecting" ... or it perhaps got stuck on an earlier update, as the text was saying in the status bar, I think I remember it was "MDAC ..." something.
- 9. I gave up and hit Cancel, it was trying to cleanup and cancel for too long so I gave up on that and tried to close it.
- 10. Closing also took too long so I forcefully terminated the process.
- 11. I had to manually delete all caches and temp locations. AppData\Temp\NLTmpMnt proved hard to delete. Thankfully I had the "Take Ownership" of the whole folder, which took like 5 minutes to finish, and then I was able to delete it.
Anyway, on to the second attempt, next day:
- 1. From a freesh computer boot. I reloaded everything in NTLite and loaded up my preset as overwrite.
- 2. An error message appeared saying that "Windows6.1-kb3156016 and kb4539602 .msu" is missing. I just hit OK button.
- 3. I didn't check well enough but the missing updates were not automatically enqueued for re-download, nor was there any prompts.
- 4. I proceeded with Processing, but I had to cancel.
- 5. I manually downloaded the same updates from microsoft catalog and it worked, I didn't put them in the update cache manually, I wanted to see how would NTLite work itself out.
After inspecting the Preset XML, these two updates aren't found in it, but all there is are absolute filepaths to the msu updates in the update cache.
I don't know what happened exactly, I saved the preset before any crashing or anything happened, so these updates should have been enqueued, unless NTLite was doing a silent preset modification or I forgot and accidentially saved the preset again when I shouldn't.
Anyway there's no prompt to re-add the updates from online when loading a preset in case something is missing, perhaps that could be done in future.
Moreover, the way presets save update info could perhaps be improved, the preset should include the update ids that were staged for enqueue, whether or not they're part of an update cache. If there's an additional custom cache folder that could be it's own XML parameter. The processing step, or a secondary verification step would take care of that, determining whether an enqueued update is part of a cache or not. Or the process of loading up a preset should perhaps involve those actions more closely, the ones I did when adding updates to the enqueue list for the first time, I guess the preset loading step does not involve triggering the "Add latest online updates" function.
NTLite seems to have an internal list of all the updates, because it was able to list and enqueue them without the internet, only after processing it figured out it couldn't connect, but I'm not sure on this because it might have been a different domain that wasn't blocked, but only the download domain.
Another question is, if the 2 updates weren't part of the preset when I loaded it, I don't know, how did NTLite know they were missing?
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