Biggeh

uhm... i think yes... just have a look at this one: http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/oemfolders.htm

1. you are using an unattend.txt file (it is the same as winnt.sif but the name dont matter). you can save it on the bootdisk or on a server share. when starting setup you have to use switches to point to the unattend-file. like: x:\i386\winnt /s:x:\i386 /u:x:\unattend.txt and yes you should modify it since you want a real unattended setup. you can find a deploy.cab somewhere on the xp-cd - there are helpfiles (like deploy.chm) with all possible entries in the unattend file and a program called setupmgr.exe (i think) which can create an unattend.txt after you made all changes to fit your installation. 2. you can use any dos/win bootdisk. you have to add networkdrivers to be able to connect to the server and to be able to map your install-directory. further you have to partition the hdd and to format before you can start the network-setup. dont forget to load smartdrv after you formatted the hdd but before you start setup! i am using a win2k server for installation and found a really nice and easy to use/configure win-net-bootdisk here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~bdriver/bootdisk/ which supports about 60 nics.

probably i am wrong or i have just misunderstood... this msg (press a key...) comes from the windows cd so if u want to get rid of it u will have to change the bootsector of the cd... (huh?) if your hdd is empty (no partitions) u can make a workaround, just change the bios-startup options to hdd/cdrom/floppy. since there is no partition on the hdd it will boot from the cdrom (u will have to press a key) but after the installation started and there is a (bootable) partition it will start from the hdd first and wont show u the cd-boot message... i think at least

lo i am also playing around with network install and have some problems to automatically create partitions. i dont check if its more than 50% of the hdd, i am just using gdisk to create a 4gb fat32 partition which is big enough to install XP (gdisk 1 /del /all and gdisk 1 /cre /sz:4000 /for) - tbh: a 2gb fat16 would do the trick as well (gdisk 1 /cre /sz:2000 /for /-32) in the unattend-file u can convert it to ntfs (filesystem=convertNTFS) and resize it to the full capacity (ExtendPartition=1 i think) or the size you want it (ExtendPartition=16000).