brute force

dont know. that is what i am trying to get from you. havent tried it yet. but i will be trying today. thanks ricktendo64. (i have other changes im working on, like trying to find how i can do this unattended and resolve a computername problem---need to be able to change computer name)

yep. i noticed that the bios has an "asset tag", but that is always "none". the bios on the dell's always have a "service tag" number in there so its too bad wsname cant grab that from there.

Eh? wsname is a great util (it's part of many small utils I keep on my USB mem stick). I've renamed thousands of workstations with it before. It does like 95% of the job for you. Just how much simpler do you expect? And no, there are no totally automatic solutions that just guesses the name for you. Don't wanna sound rude, but this is already very fast, simple and straightforward. Trivial. Just get the service tag # using WMI (iirc you want the SerialNumber property of the Win32_SystemEnclosure class or else of the Win32_BIOS class -- sorry, don't have a Dell handy to check), then pass that # as an argument while calling wsname. Can be done with almost any scripting language (vbscript, jscript, powershell, or any "standard" language like C# or whatever you like) Alternately, you can keep a database with mac addy's or service tag #s to workstation names or such, and call that in your script... So many possibilities. sorry, i am not a programmer. to me it sounds difficult. but i am certainly willing to learn. let me take a look at wsname. any more tips would be appreicated. Thanks

anyone know of a way to get a dell service tag number as the computer name

wow. is this the best we got. seems like a lot of pain. almost wondering if this whole unattended thing is worth it. got to be a better way to get names in there? i was hoping not to fallback to Ghost thanks

yep. im not sure that is the best way to do it. i dont want any user input. it can take a while to get an answer here sometimes, although i am new to this. ill let you know what i get. right now i will be testing with a name there (test) and ill see what happens

i am trying to create an unattended cd. the whole reason for this is so i can use this on multiple computers. i used nlite and the drvierpacks. by the way the driverpacks are unbelievable. just did my first install and drivers are all there including graphics. amazing. my question is, since i want to use it on multiple computers, what do i put in for the computer name in nlite configuration. also i am not getting the box for logging into the domain. thanks for your time

thanks. not quite sure i understand. is the name of this file supposed to be entries.ini? not much info on "addons" or entries.ini on nlite site. then just always add this file to the hot fixes that i am adding? what if i need to change the SIF file some more? thanks again

here you go. thanks before_WINNT.SIF after_WINNT.SIF

wow. ok. ill do that. for example, id like to comment out the Autopartition line of [data] and add "repartition=yes" to the [unattended] section

ok, thanks for your prompt response. its a real pain to go thru the process and put in some changes manually repeatedly because nlite doesnt handle something (like Autopartition). ill have to deal with it. thanks again

i am a newbie to Nlite. i tried checking stickies and did not see this. i used nlite to make my test cd (before drivers etc). i see that id like to make changes so i make the changes manually to the winnt.sif file. when i got back to nlite and make changes there, when process is complete, my changes are not in the winnt.sif file. i continually need to make the changes to the sif file after i run the nlite process. in summary, changes that i make with nlite are incorporated , of course, into the sif file and changes i make manually are not incorporated. how can i get nlite to recognize the new sif file instead of the old one when i am making changes in lite. thanks for your help

http://www.msfn.org/board/Integrate-IE7-re...t-E-t88472.html Unfortunetly the thread dosen't provide a solution... have never used nLite

did you ever get an answer to this. i have the same issue. thanks

Since it's an ISO you're wanting to test in the VM, then you don't need, or have any use for, a pre-installed OS on the VM, since you wan't to test if the ISO can be installed without problems and if it else functions as it should... i see. thanks very much for your help. much appreciated

thank you for that correction. but i still dont understand. my post was about the unattended document you have on XP. on the last page, there is a recommendation (and a good idea) about doing it on a virtual machine. is this not a question about the very topic title that i posted? (unattended xp install). thanks for your time

i am looking at the excellent step by step instructions for the above. as a last step, the author says to test on a virtual pc. but the problem is for the testing to be done on a virtual pc (using virtual pc or vmware), you need an OS on it to begin with. therefore negating this strategy. please let me know if i am incorrect or i am missing something. thanks