lord_kaos

I'm new at unattended installations, but I've got one that works almost exactly the way that I want it to. I'm just having a problem with activation currently. Here's a little background on what we're trying to accomplish. XP SP2 OEM CD, slipstreamed current critical updates, nLite'd down to remove some stuff, RunOnceEx.cmd has a few silent installs. We're looking to install XP with current critical updates, add a few customizations, install a few applications with as little interaction as needed. I've currently got it down so that all we really need to do is partition/format/select partition to install to. The install does everything including DriverPacks and it all works great except that after rebooting, it asks for the correct CD Key to activate. We're using the MVF4Dxxxxx OEM Pro key that Microsoft lists on its site for OEM installs as a generic key to install. After we change the key to the proper one on the COA (OEM COA), it acts like it activates successfully. Upon reboot, however, it bombs out saying that the grace period has expired and that we need to activate and our CD Key never works again. Surely there has to be a way of creating an unattended install that will cover these problems without the requirement of calling Mickeysoft every time to activate. Our only other solution is to install each machine fresh (the keys work fine from a fresh install when the keys are entered in manually during installation). If all of the machines we deal with were identical, i'd create an image and just "ghost" them and use sysprep, but I've got to go this route unless there is a way to ghost/sysprep/ and do a DriverPacks finisher AFTER the image is deployed. Anyone have any ideas? I've searched all over for my particular issues and have read a ton on the subject. I just can't wrap my head around this.