"no Unicode byte order mark"??????
 

OK, this is my first time adding my own programs to the Kitchen. I did everything as the "Apache Kitchen Walkthrough" told me to. As soon as I start up the BuildOS the following message comes up for every program that I added:

USER_OEM\Optional_Misc_(my program)\Option.xml
There is no Unicode byte order mark. Cannot switch to Unicode.

I tried to go back and change the Encoding to Unicode and back to ANSI but is does not seem to make a difference. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I feeel like I'm almost there!

Option.xml files should never be Unicode--always ANSI. I know that's confusing because every other text file you create (rgu, initflashfiles) needs to be Unicode BOM.

Re-encoding the file to ANSI should work, but if it doesn't try making a brand new option.xml file and leave it in ANSI to begin with.

BTW I suggest notepad2 (google for it) for text editing. If you don't have that you should be using notepad (not Word or Wordpad or whatever).

Thanks luv2chill!! What I ended up doing was to change the "UTF-16" to UTF-8 and the BuildOS took it. The problem that I encountered now is that the programs did not go where they were suppose to. They went into Windows, however, they did not go into the Programs file, and/or the Games file. I ended up finding the shortcut to them and physically putting them into there respective files. And now it works, but it pisses me off that can't figure out what is right in front of me! I have gone back and checked what I have done compared to what was mentioned, and I did everything right. I even extracted the WM6 files and looked at what you guys did on a few programs and mine compared to everything you did! Something is really kicking my ass here!

your problem is with initflashfiles.txt. Either you didn't create one, didn't put it in Unicode format, or didn't use the correct syntax in the file(s). If you want to post up your initflashfiles.txt here someone can take a look at it and let you know if it's correct. And if you don't have an initflashfiles.txt in your OEMs then that's why the shortcuts didn't get copied.

Thanks again luv2chill!!! I did create a initflashfile.txt file for each program. Here is what I had put for one of the programs:

Directory("\windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games"):-File("Billiard Master2.lnk"."\windows\bm2.lnk")

I originally put in the Start and End to the command just as the Apache Kitchen Walkthrough had suggested, but my final attempt I tried it without (as you see above) and it still did the same thing. Hopefully some will see something I'm not!

Not to sound like a Dummy, but, I JUST noticed when I sent this over that I have a period instead of a comma between the quotes right after Billiard Master2. I bet that is culprit. Can someone comment?

That'll do it. Needs to be a comma.

Just some background as to why initflashfiles.txt is needed...
All files in an OEM get put directly in \Windows. If anything needs to be copied anywhere else it must be done in initflashfiles.txt
These files are only copied, not moved because you cannot move a ROM file. So just remember that anything copied using initflashfiles will be using up storage space. Best OEMs use very little initflash.

Conversely, if you're doing a lot with initflashfiles.txt, you might consider not making it an OEM and stick to .cab installation.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, it is probably better to do what I did and have the BuildOS just dump everything into \windows and than go back after the ROM boots, find the shortcuts, and put them into the Programs folder?

No.. it's the same exact thing that initflashfiles can do for you, but just remember that anything copied is copied and not moved so it takes up space in ROM as well as program memory. A couple of shortcuts are fine, but once you start copying images, themes, exe's, dlls or other files to subfolders or other places on the device, then the OEM isn't really worth it anymore.