[Deploy a Windows XP image from WDS Unattended]

I contacted UIU today to make them aware of the problem. Zach said that they were looking into the problem to see if they could find a solution for us. This is only going to become bigger as more people move to WDS.

Ben in SC

[Deploy a Windows XP image from WDS Unattended]

Were you able to get UIU to work with WDS? I'm getting stuck when trying to redeploy a UIU image.

Thanks!

Ben in SC

Good afternoon, it's my first day here and my first post - I have searched the forum, but don't see anything like my issue being mentioned...maybe I am just too n00b .

Here is what I am trying to accomplish:

I want to deploy Unattended installs of Windows XP using PXE and RIS (WDS) throughout my domain from different sites that require no user intervention outside of renaming the PC once it is up and running (will use dameware to do so) I want to use the Universal Imaging Utility to build the final image, so that it is hardware independant. All of my sites are connected via an internal network cloud.

Here is how I see it happening in my head:

End user boots into PXE by pressing F12,

PXE boots, user selects DEPLOY from the PXE menu

The master image deploys

The PC boots up and is prenamed and joined to the domain

The user logs on, and has the PC name and IP address (using BGINFO on the desktop), which he/she gives me

I dameware into the PC, rename it

After rebooting, I move the PC to the correct OU (can this be automated based on IP or something else?)

Here is what I have in place:

Windows 2003 AD, etc...

I have a Windows 2003 SP2 server running Windows Deployment Services (WDS), I have never had RIS installed, nor have I ever set up RIS. I pulled the boot files I needed for PXE to work from a Vista DVD. I built a master PC by installing windows XP from a CD, Office, configured the system to our standard, etc. My test desktop boots to PXE, and I can capture and deploy my master PC image to and from the WDS server.

What is missing:

I cannot figure out how to get the imaging to work unattended. Once Windows is deployed, it goes through the process of asking for the license key, etc... I have used the setup manager to create answer files, but cannot get them to work.

Any thoughts on what I am missing? I have read tons of documentation and some of the suggestions don't work for getting XP to deploy unattended.

Thanks,

Justin