I'm sure there's a whole lot of things I don't know, but in all the stuff I've read over the years about Windows, I can't say I've ever heard a thing about MSBATCH before. And given that "+msbatch" has less than 8,000 hits on Google, I doubt I'm alone.

What exactly do you want to do? If extensive customization is what you have in mind, perhaps 98lite would be a worthy investment.
http://www.litepc.com/98lite.html

Jorpho wrote:

I'm sure there's a whole lot of things I don't know, but in all the stuff I've read over the years about Windows, I can't say I've ever heard a thing about MSBATCH before. And given that "+msbatch" has less than 8,000 hits on Google, I doubt I'm alone.

What exactly do you want to do? If extensive customization is what you have in mind, perhaps 98lite would be a worthy investment.
http://www.litepc.com/98lite.html

I intend to use MSBATCH for creating a (almost) automated install, but 98FE (the version the original MSBATCH was made for, and actually shipped with on the cd) has different optional components then ME has.
I did think of a way to still use it, theres a file called *does quick googleing* setuplog.txt.
Heres a link which describes it pretty well:
http://www.hermit.cc/teach/ho/win/hobatset.htm

Basically it goes like this:
When you install ME (or any other 9x for that matter) you get to choose a whole lot of options like what country and timezone you are in, what keyboard layout you use, entering your product key etc etc.
After your install is done, a file called setuplog.txt is created in the windows directory which contains all the options you picked during install.
If you edit those options into a file called "MSBATCH.INF" and create an ISO file with it, burning the modded Windows Install cd and starting another install with it, all the options you had to pick manually will now be picked automatically!

I mean, how often do you move to a different country anyway? 😉

Edit:I forgot.
When MSBATCH created the MSBATCH.INF file it'll leave a 1998 date in it. The MSBATCH file I found on that weird systembuilder cd has 2000 as it's date, indicating Microsoft actually had a newer version of MSBATCH that supported ME out of the box but they never even mentioned it!

Not many people have actually gone through the trouble of getting the 2000 version of MSBATCH (IF it exists) since the setuplog.txt thingy kinda makes it obsolete anyway.
I just never knew of the setuplog.txt thing myself until last weekend.