Unattended Setup Of XP Pro

[Silver Bullet]

Right... *Takes Deep Breath* ya ready....  

I slipstreamed the windows xp service pack into xp and made the cd bootable. (so installs as normal but already has service pack installed)

But........

I want to make it start an unattended setup usuing an answer file, but the only way i can find to do it is using a floppy disk to hold the answer file  .....and so to the problem..  

what i want is the whole thing on CD and nothing else, setup files, answer file the lot..

anyone know anywhere to find a guide or know how to do this?

[Anonymous]

You\'ll have to boot the CD to DOS and start and unattend setup from a command line.

i386winnt.exe /S:i386 /U:i386unattend.txt

Just make a bootable CD that goes to a command prompt and add the rest to the autoexec.bat to executes the line for the unattended install.

[Anonymous]

here is  the site with an article outlining how to do what you are asking.


http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?id=202...ect=article.cfm

[Twinkie]

Make your unattend.txt file and rename to winnt.sif

Then place in the i386 folder and burn the CD.  Done.

[Space Between]

You can throw it in the i386 like twinkie says...but if you want to pick your install directory incase the destination of the computer already has a folder with the name Windows or whatever...you will need to run it out of dos. I wrote a batch file that let\'s you create a unattended.txt file in dos before running it. It\'s crude in many ways since you can do it in edit, but mine already include\'s all the tag\'s and syntax to create a proper unattend.txt file so for user\'s who dont know the correct syntax this is good. However alternatively you could create a unattend.txt file and place in on the root of the cd...then load that into edit and run that file from a ramdrive.

Only thing that has stopped me from testing it (beside\'s i dont want to install XP) is that i dont know if the unatted.txt file being loaded from the ramdrive will work. It might...but might not. This is because i dont know if after you restart your computer it will look for the unatted.txt file in the ramdrive again...which it wouldnt be there since you restarted.

[Silver Bullet]

hi thx guys for all your help...

1 more quickie, can i get the cd to do a quick format of the installation partition b4 installing? using a parameter in winnt.sif perhaps?

[Twinkie]

To a limited degree yes.  You can include the following commands into your winnt.sif file to exhurt some control of the partition Windows will use.  They are:
[Data]
    AutoPartition=1
Installs Windows to the first available partition that has adequate space for a Windows installation and does not already contain an installed version of Windows. Either omit the AutoPartition entry from your answer file or set the value of AutoPartition to 1. If AutoPartition = 1, the /tempdrive command-line option of Winnt32.exe is ignored. If you do not set the value, text-mode Setup installs Windows on the partition where $WIN_NT$.~LS is located, usually C:

[Unattended]
   Repartition=Yes/No
Specifies whether all partitions on the first drive on the client computer are deleted and the drive reformatted with the NTFS file system.  Important!!  Repartition is valid only when performing an unattended Setup by booting the computer from the Windows product CD.

   ExtendOemPartition=0/1/SetMB
0=Setup does not extend the partition.
1=Setup extends the partition to fill out the hard disk on which you are installing Windows but automatically leaves the last cylinder on the hard disk free to allow dynamic disk support.
SetMB=Setup increases the current partition size by this amount. This will become a questionable bonus if you ever install on a system without that much free space.  Not sure what would happen though as I never use this.


Also, Space, you can change the install directory to whatever you want other than WINNT or Windows.  Of course all installs for that CD will go there afterwards.  If you need on the fly changing people should try your approach though.
[Unattended]
   ....
   TargetPath=WINBLOWS

[Guest]

okay - here's a problem i have.
i want to automate setup with RIS - am installing on machines with NT4, 4GB system/boot partitions. we're going to get the users to copy their files to the D partition, and i want to reformat the C drive - start with a clean slate. how do i automate the format of the drive?

reformatting the c drive certainly is possible during a RIS install, but it's a manual intervention to OK it.