begey

just to let you know, >NUL does't work in config.sys but it does work in autoexec.bat, applied to mscdex.exe - @ECHO OFF MODE CON COLS=40 LINES=1 it works in the command window but the lines command is not recognised when executed from the autoexec.bat it might be because my floppy has command.com and dos files coming from a dos 6.2 disk, or I don't know. thanks for the ideas anyway, the >NUL will definitely prove useful in the future.

Me too, or at least something similar. in previous regular installs of xp I was manually disabling fast user switching from ctrl panel and that was the end of it, but with this first partially succesful unattended installation when I go for log off I am presented with the two icons, one for log off and one for switch user, even if the service is disabled. I tried to disable manually from ctrl panel but I can't cuz it's already disabled, and that's correct. I wonder if this has anything to do with skipping the Welcome, which by the way has the other unpleasent effect of registering all my settings with the name Owner. I would rather see myself as CapedAvenger or MermaidMan, but even when you change your user name all your docs and the registry remains full of Owner. And creating a new user means having to reapply all the reg tweaks that were user specific. oops, am I digressing here? so, anyway, having the switch user button doing nothing there is quite annoying, like having the buttons on your car's dashboard for the optional cd changer that you couldn't afford to buy.

no problem with F6... but I really want to boot in DOS and see my letters there. I am trying to have a floppy boot disk that I can use to build a bootable ghost disk for backup purposes. so this is not exactly an unattended cd thing. I guess I should start a new thread but I am posting here since it seems that this is the thread where people in the knowledge hangs around, and I am a newbie anyway so I don't dare to start a new thread (I am not even allowed, probably).

thanks to this forum I learnt how to include SATA drivers in the unattended installation cd. well, great, I wouldn't have got there even if I had attended microsoft certified courses for two years (though I would have learned all those other interesting things, on how windows is the best of the systems ever and open source is against democracy and freedom) now I wonder, is there any way I can load these drivers in dos, to create a dos boot disk? my only HDD is SATA and loading a boot disk I can only see the cd. The driver is VIA VT6420, I tried naively to add the viasraid.sys that is used by XP to the list of devices to be loaded from the boot disk but obviously it doesn't work (though it creates a scary matrix-like sequance of numbers that never ends ). I don't seem to see specific dos drivers on the VIA website, nor on the website of Biostar (the maker of my small IDEQ N200). any suggestion is welcomed.

I am trying to make bootdisk that doesn't show the loading of aspicd.sys and the other drivers, I don't know if there is a proper way to do it so I thought I could just change the color to black on black. It wouldn't work cuz I see that it changes also what was on screen before so my professional looking "please wait..." wouldn't remain visible, but just for the heck, is it possible to have background and foreground the same color? when I enter the same digit it looks like the command is ignored. And any suggestion on how to avoid seeing the load message of the various display.sys, aspi etc drivers, maybe using an alternative method would be very appreciated. my ignorance has no limit, you can navigate inside my head for days without meeting a notion, it's a very relaxing place...

setupapi.dll setupapi alone is no good. luckily there was another post by Numinous with the correct syntax so I could figure it out. I suppose it would have been obvious to any advanced user but I was going crazy...

thanks, I will try as soon as I finish to tamper with miy other batch files...

WOW! CHOICE! how easy things seem once someone comes and solves the problem for you! Thanks a lot. assuming the problem is solved, still, is there a way to get input from the user without just choosing from a list? say, 'if you want to proceed, type "sure, don't worry, I know what I am doing, and I am not going to regret it as soon as it's 5 seconds too late to do anything about it" but anyway, CHOICE is perfect for what I needed, thank you.

so xp is installed with the unattended cd. super cool. but now I want to do a recovery cd with ghost, it should be a bootable self executing cd like those from the like of compag, hp etc. ghost 7 allows me to create a bootable cd with the ghost image and ghost itself but you are still expected to operate ghost: what kind of batch should I use there to prompt the user for confirmation before dumping the image and then execute ghost? -basically I don't know how to write a script, you see- I found an example somewhere but it assumed some version of freedos that I don't know so some file is missing and the script stops because the instruction "get" is not recognised. how could I do it with MSDOS? or with anything else? Can anyone point me to a tutorial or a guide? I have found Bart's page (nu2u) but ...er.. it still seems a bit above my reach any help is much much appreciated.

Hello, I just finished my unattended installation - well, first cautious attempt, still missing hotfixes and most of the tweaks I intend to include. I had a problem with the drivers for my SATA disk though. my pc is a small form cube, the only drive is Serial ATA and the raid/ide controller is from VIA (though the chipset is the Nvidia2). the bios doesn't seem to recognise any disk, I suppose I should try upgrading it but the bios update is something I want to try as a last resort, as it seems more complicate than the usual (strange file format, conflicting instructions on the website). I was able to install XP home normally by pressing F6 and using a floppy that I made from the drivers' cd. But when I use the unattended cd something goes wrong: I can press F6, copy drivers from the floppy, the installation proceeds, format C, copy all the installation files but then I am asked for the same driver again, and even if I see that the floppy is searched nothing is found: so eventually I skip installing the driver, windows restarts and at the first sign of the XP logo I have a bsod talking about a possible faulty drive. I solved the problem by booting with a win98 start up disk (good thing I formatted fat32) and copying manually the missing driver (viaraid.sys) in system32. At reboot, everything is well. But why does it happen? Is it because my unattended cd has a DRIVERS folder that is empty and overwrites the driver it had just copied from the floppy? What should I put in the script in order to install these or other SCSI/SATA drivers BEFORE windows attempts to find a drive to partition or use? -I have to learn to make my posts shorter, sorry. By the way, thank you so much to all of you for all the knowledge on this site and the UNATTENDED subsite, it's absolutely great, and special thanks to all those who are posting sample scripts as they are so essential to someone who is still moving the first steps like me.