maddly

I'm not trying to circumvent the legality, we have a legitimate computer repair business and the clients provide the software or purchase new as needed - what happens is, they bring in pcs all the time with XP upgrade on it, and want it reformatted and re-installed. They upgraded and currently have thier win98, win2000, winME or whatever disc also. I am just trying to find a way to automate the process so that AFTER I show the upgrade disc a legal, valid, client owned copy and then swap the CD at the prompt, that somehow I can have the setup 'take off' from that point and be automated. I just want to save time and if it's not possible, then it's not possible. I will just have to swap them (the CDs) and help the install along. If changing the PID puts them in legal jeopardy, then I won't do it. It's only a small percentage of the customers I deal with, but anything I can do to save time helps! :-)

Once again, thanks! I would like to clarify and make sure we're saying the same thing. I'm not trying to do an upgrade, I'm just trying to use the upgrade version because that's what most of my clients purchase since they do have an existing version of windows. I fdisk and then run the boot cd. So it's a clean install, but just from an upgrade CD. Getting late here too...am I making any sense? *grin*

I'm so glad I found this site, what great information :-)

Thank you!

On a clean formatted PC when you use an upgrade CD it asks you to do the CD swap thing (show it an old version of windows)...once I get past that point will the unattended install still work? I have the Full Home version working, now I want to make an upgrade version because the serial numbers are different for the different versions (I am assuming I can't use an 'upgrade' CD key with a 'full' version). I'm very new to all this, hopefully you'll all be patient with me, I did a search here, and on the web and everyone seems to address unattended with 'full' versions. Thanks!

I followed the instructions and it seems to be working for the most part. I was attempting to test it on an old laptop that had win98 on it and it asked about the existing partition. Can I tell it to delete/format and keep going automatically and if so, how? Thank you.