betamax

no one's done an unattended install from a bootdisk?

/bump If anyone is familiar with this please let me know. Thanks!

If I use a boot disk to copy the i386 folder to the hard drive and run winnt.exe from there, does the MsdosInitated= switch have to be set to 1? What happens if I set it to 0? The only difference I see between the two is the $Winnt$.~ls folder that is temporarily created, but why is this folder necessary when you're installing from a location on the hard drive to start with?

copy does a shallow copy (doesn't recurse into sub directories) while xcopy has the option to do a rescursive copy which will copy all files and subfolders within the target folder that you are copying. if you're just copying one single file, either one will suffice.

What's the deal with this folder? Why would it ever be needed if you're installing from a boot disk? The reason why I'm asking is that I was thinking about using a boot disk to format my drive and then copy the i386 folder to C:. After that I was going to just run winnt.exe from c:\i386 and specify my unattend.txt file. I just wasn't sure if I should bother setting the MsdosInititated switch to 1, or if i should leave it at 0. I'm also wondering of I need to format the drive using the /s option so that it copies system files over to make it bootable, or if Windows Setup will copy system files to the drive and turn it into a bootable (in that case i wouldn't need the /s option). Thanks!

but where does sysprep go? on the cd? i'm not really sure what sysprep does. from my understanding you run it from a machine that already has windows installed, and then specify a target machine to install windows to or something. can sysprep be used with a bootable windows cd somehow when performing a clean install?

if so, where does sysprep.ini file go? same place as winnt.sif?

taken from this thread is there a way to force setup to install off of the newly created c:\i386 folder instead of the CD

1. how do I install windows xp off the HD on a system with a single drive and a single partition? 2. is there a way to tell Setup to copy the i386 folder to the harddrive before installing windows? 3. why does the $OEM$ folder have to be in parallel with the i386 folder for a CD unattended install? what would happen if the $OEM$ folder was inside the i386 folder? 4. how do large PC companies set up their systems? These are more WinPE oriented. I will repost them on the WinPE forum if you feel that are inappropriate for this one. 5. does /syspart:c: cause the source files to get copied to the HD? If so, what's the difference between /syspart and /makelocalsource? The main question out of all is this is: how do you get that darn i386 folder copied onto the HD before installing windows without using xcopy from a bootable floppy?

I only have one CD rom drive on my system. If I boot my machine with the BartPE cd in the drive, how can I get it so I can swap out the cd for another one (like a windows xp install disc)? My hard drive is blank, so I can't boot off of it. My underlying goal is to be able to install windows from bartPE. The problem is, whenever I take the BartPE disc out of the drive, it stops working. BartPE freezes up and I have to restart.

Hi! And thanks! Yes, I forgot to mention I've also just modified the registry to change the source path, but that just seems more like a workaround. I still wonder what process those vendors use. It seems like such a basic option, I don't know why it's not part of the normal install process. What do you guys do? [edited for typos]

This has been a wonder of mine for quite a while. It seems every forum I go to only has some vague or uncertain answer to this question. It doesn't seem like a hard one. This forum appears to be very knowledgable though, so I'll ask here. I've always wanted to know how the computer vendors (like gateway and dell) do OEM installs of windows. What is common about all of them is that the windows cd is never needed later on(obviously because the source files [i386] have been copied to the hard drive). But it's not that simple. As a normal end user, my best bet for doing a fresh install of windows (XP) is to boot off the install cd and just let it go. The thing is, it never offers me the option of having Setup copy the i386 folder to the harddrive locally and running setup off of that. There is always the boot-disk -> xcopy -> winnt.exe method, but it seems like there should be an easier way. You can copy your i386 folder after installation, but your paths will be messed up and you will always have to indicate that the source files are located at C:\i386. WINNT32.exe has the /makelocalsource switch, but that can only be run from a 32 bit environment (like winpe or something, or if i was installing as an upgrade). So how is it done? Is there a way to do this during an unattended install? Maybe somewhere in the answer file that tells setup to copy i386 to the drive during the text setup phase? I always see a $OEM$ folder within the i386 folder on preinstalled machines which suggests an unattended install was done. But the guides for doing an unattended install always tell you to have your $OEM$ folder at the same level as the i386, not within the i386 folder. In earlier versions of windows (95,98,ME), the source files were located in C:\windows\options\cabs. Does anyone else here see where I'm coming from? Thanks in advance. -betamax