A few days ago I stumbled over a 3GB zip file containing all the work related to this project but unfortunately the archive was damaged. For amusement’s sake I tried to recover as much files as possible and managed it to get most of them back, so I installed the latest build of Codename Sylvester I found.

Most likely you have seen some of these hacked (and in most of the cases pirated) Windows XP versions called something like “Windows XP Dark Edition” or “Windows XP Ultimate Gamers Edition” or whatever. When I was working on Sylvester I didn’t had the feeling that I am creating something like this. My goal was to create a light-weight, fast, stable and good-looking version of Windows XP which not only I would use, but also other people.

After installing it I was a little bit impressed, because parts of it looked very well (re-styled setup routine, OOBE, logon UI, etc.), but this impression didn’t last very long. All I have done are some hackjobs on various resource files and executeables and slimming down the ISO, but actually I didn’t accomplish any of the goals I had for this project expect the visuals (which are incomplete too).

Why am I writing this? Well, there are so many projects similar to Sylvester and I came to the conclusion that they are useless. Actually noone will ever use bullshit like that. They don’t work very well with Windows Update (reshacked dlls get replaced and things are broken then), often they are slow and bloated and of course, the are illegal. I have been working on Sylvester for about two months back then and I must admit, this was wasted time.

Don’t waste your time!

Y: This increases every year the team is working on the product
MM: The month in which the build was compiled
DD: The day on which the build was compiled
NN: Number of recompiles of the build (during the development this number is mostly 00 or 01, but when a build gets branched for release, the other parts of the build number are freezed and only this part increments)

This build number format is not only used for Visual Studio and .NET, but also for many other products like Commerce Server 2009, Codename Geneva ir Microsoft Silverlight.

Here are a few examples:

8.0.40607.16 – VS 2005 Beta 1 – 2004*, 7th June, recompile no. 16
8.0.50215.44 – VS 2005 Beta 2 – 2005, 15 February, recompile no. 44
8.0.50727.26 – VS 2005 RC – 2005, 27th July, recompile no. 26
8.0.50727.42 – VS 2005 RTM

9.0.20404.00 – VS 2008 Beta 1
9.0.20706.01 – VS 2008 Beta 2
9.0.21022.08 – VS 2008 RTM

10.0.11001.01 – VS 2010 CTP
10.0.20506.01 – VS 2010 Beta 1

*Orginally the Y was the last character of the calendar year, but with the beginning of the development of Visual Studio 2008 it has been changed to the number of the year the team is working on the project.

There are 3 kinds of these developer builds, which are:

IDW – Internal Developer Workstation
IDS – Internal Developer Server

Originally the IDS term was used to describe a build which can be used as a server and the IDW term was used for a build which can be used as a workstation inside Microsoft “without too much pain”. Later, this connotation has changed and these builds have been seperated into two “tiers”: IDW for unstable builds and IDS for builds which are a bit more stable than IDW builds, but not as stable as beta builds. IDS builds did not have to be a Server SKU anymore (and vice versa).
Today, the term IDW is used for CTPs and stuff like this and the term IDS is used to describe unstable builds, or builds of a “helper-branch” (for example winmain_win7ids).
The term IDX (Internal Developer Client/Server) is used to avoid confusion between IDS and IDW.

Here is a quote a guy from the WSSG (Windows Server Solutions Group) made once:

This milestone is termed the “Internal Developer Server” (IDS) build – it’s
an internal quality term we use meaning that the build is stable enough to
deploy and evaluate, but may contain more minor bugs than a Beta build.
You’ll run into some unedited UI stings, and some bugs that we purposefully
chose not to fix until later in the development cycle. It’s a tradeoff we’ve
made to ensure we keep getting great feedback without unduly delaying the
project.

EDW – External Developer Workstation

This term was used during the final development of Windows Vista (between RC and RTM) for builds which got released to the TAPs. I am not sure if this term has been used for anything else, but I think you can compare this with the IDX builds of Windows 7 (which represent something like an inofficial/internal Release Candidate).

Let me know if you have any anything to add.

This is where Parser comes into play: It reads the setup information file and sorts the files for you.

How does it work?

Microsofts setup information files usually look like this (exerpt):

tutor = “wintutor.exe ”
NetSetup = FALSE
MouseDrv = TRUE
Version = “3.1.040″

; This is data needed by the MS-DOS half of setup so that it can copy the
; proper kernel and start Windows for the GUI portion of setup.
;
; ** MS-DOS documentation says that first byte of command line for 4a call
; ** should be space. ==> in execcmd RHS leave first space as it is now
[winexec]
execstd = “dosx.exe ”
execcmd = ” krnl286.exe /b /q:”
exechimem = “xmsmmgr.exe”
himemcmd = “”
Krnl386 = 2:krnl386.exe
Krnl286 = 2:krnl286.exe
dosx = 2:dosx.exe

; Names of the disks Setup can prompt for.
[disks]
1 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #1″,disk1
2 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #2″,disk2
3 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #3″,disk3
4 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #4″,disk4
5 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #5″,disk5
6 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #6″,disk6
7 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #7″,disk7
8 =. ,”Microsoft Windows 3.1 disk #8″,disk8

[oemdisks]
Z =. ,”HP DeskJet Series v2.0 disk (z krabice s tiskárnou, nebo od HP)”,diskz

[user]
4:setup.ini, noupdate

[windows]
1:setup.hlp
1:install.com
1:setup.txt
1:win.src, Net
1:system.src, Net
1:winhelp.exe
2:control.hlp
2:GLOSSARY.HLP
3:WINHELP.HLP

[windows.system]
1:gdi.exe
2:user.exe
1:win.cnf
1:lzexpand.dll
2:ver.dll

Using regular expressions, Parser looks for every line in the file with matches with that pattern N:FILENAME.EXT (N is the number of the floppy disk on which the file has to be put to).
After scanning the setup.inf, Parser creates folders and moves the setup files into them.
All you have to do after that process is putting the contents of each folder onto a disk image or floppy disk.

PARSER 1.1

Version history

v1.1 – 26/07/2009 – Minor bug fixes
v1.0 – 27/04/2009 – Initital release of Parser

Known issues

• Parser does not support chars as floppy disk identifiers fixed in version 1.1
• Parser does not support paths containig spaces at this point

Microsoft Hotfix Installer (.exe)

setup.exe /t:C:\extracted_files\ /c

Microsoft Update Standalone Package (.msu)

expand -F:* update.msu C:\extracted_files
cd extracted_files
expand -F:* update.cab C:\extracted_files

Microsoft Patch File (.msp)

msix patch.msp /out C:\extracted_files
msix.zip

Windows Installer Package (.msi)

msiexec /a setup.msi /qb TARGETDIR=C:\extracted_files