muffinman123

ok, so I have been checking out various unattended mode installer script for windows xp setup CD. they all seem to be telling me that it is impossible to have the system providing me a default serial key and allowing me to enter my own on the installation page like I stated in post #7 because all these tools are just using windows deployment tool which only let admins to enter the key once in the script file and that's it. am I missing anything? is there still any other way of doing what I wanted to do?

I tried gui attended and provide defaults modes but it still skips the product key page

Let me clarify what I hope to accomplish again: - During fresh installation of windows xp, I want to click to the page where it asks me to enter the product key - the page already provides a default product key in the text boxes (which I will integrate into the installation CD) - the text boxes are not grayed out so I can delete the key myself and enter my own keys if I want to. the thread you provided points me to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457096.aspx#ECAA which is a link provided by you in that thread. it suggests to use something like unattend.txt, but it doesn't tell me where should I place this file on the installation CD in order to make this work, some extra knowledge is required to build such setup. Also this file makes the installation unattended, while I want to be in front of the computer, checking out all the answers and see if I want to change default answers. Is it possible to simply do what I want to do with just nlite or some text file inside the cd? or it's more complicated than I imagined?

well for the product key, I want the installer to provide a default key when I fresh install windows xp, but I also want the ability to change the key if I want to. I have seen office installer doing that, I also seen that in windows 2000 installer doing that, now I want to know if I can do the same with windows xp installer by setting it up using nlite

I am modifying the msdn version of the vlk windows xp sp3, original ones to be exact, so I do not know why I am missing files. Can you also tell me about how to make serial key default but changable in the unattended setting?

In unattended mode there are 5 options -provide defaults -fully automated -hide pages -read only -gui attended -prompt repair What I intend to do is enter all the values as default, but may change the values based on the current condition of my computer. So I chose provide defaults, but when I installed with this version, the windows does not show all the dialog pages. It didn't show any serial key page so I do not have the option to enter another key if I want to change it. Is this an error or this mode is designed like this? If so, is there any mode I can enter the serial key as default and give the user the ability to enter their own key on install? Also, what does wmp.dll and t2embed.dll do? The blue screen setup warned me of the missing files, I know I removed some components using nlite, but they do not tell me what files are removed by removing that component. Thx for the help [unattended] UnattendMode = 0 DisableOem ComputerType = Automatic MaximumDataStorePercentOfDisk = 12 RestorePointLife = 30 DesktopTheme = Default|| AutoUpdates = 3 AutoUDay = 5 AutoUHour = 15 ProgFilesPath = "\Program Files"