What is the best preinstall option for our needs

[swancd]

My situation is:

We are OEM system builders but change the hardware we use quite often, i.e. differnet motherboards and processors etc.

We currently pre-install Windows XP Home & Pro via a network share where we have integrated all of the windows updates and use the RunOnce to load a few applications silently once setup has finished. We then manually load the drivers from the motherboard CD and click Reseal.

After reading about Vista preinstalls is it true that the best option for me is to use the original Vista OEM DVD and make an Autounattended.xml file on a USB flash drive?

If so my questions are:

1) Can we brand? - Would this mean putting our logo on the USB stick

2) Can we load any updates and applications sich as Adobe Reader, Firefox etc.

3) We install a mixture of the 4 versions of vista so could we use the same usb pen drive for all versions?

4) Could we install without putting a product key in and get the end user to enter like they do at the moment with Windows XP.

Look forward to your comments,

Thank You

[Mercury_22]

I think you need to inject the drivers & updates in the install.wim but i don't know about using a DVD

For installing Applications you can use Setupcomplete.cmd and about installing

without putting a product key in

i dont think you can install unattended

For all this you can try this

[swancd]

Seems strange that I can do it in XP but not for Vista? - Why would they remove that feature. When our customer gets their XP machines they get the OoBE and have to enter their XP licence key.

Simply want the same for our Vista customers.

Must be a way?!

[Mercury_22]

Maybe this is helpful (about key)!

Next time please do a search first!

[FireGeier]

Hello swancd!

You need to use a key to let the unattended Setup run, BUT you can remove the key using sysprep at the end. I'm not an OEM so I can't tell you, if OPK-Tools include a genereal key you can use for the unattended Setup only.

If the tools do not include such a key, than you can use one of the keys of the DVDs/licenses you're selling with the computer, you just need to make sure that this key will not be autoactivated during setup. There is a setting in Autounattend.xml (<SkipAutoActivation>) to avoid that.

This is the way I do it for my friends. I use my key for the unattended setup and at the end - after syspreping the machine - I put in the key from case of friends computer. If I understand right that's the same thing you wanna do.

The only thing is that I'm not to familiar with OEM-DVD cause I've never had one in my hands for Vista so far.

If you should not be prompted for the key at the end of unattended Setup, than read here.

Regards,

Martin

[swancd]

OK Thanks

How do I add our logo? - Where on the USB drive do I put our logo and in what format. Also what do I need to add to the XML file to add the logo.

Thanks