Unattend setup initiated from a BartPE environment

[dunkie12]

Hi there,

I've successfully created a complete unattend build which creates a complete install of our Company's SOE. This works fine if I start the install when booting from the DVD; however I've recently added a utility partition for the purpose of reminding users to plug a network cable into their new out of the box machines. This partition can only be ghosted onto the disk else I can't get it to work, so the manual process is as follows:

1 Boot into BartPE

2 Using diskpart, partition the disk as follows:

a 100mb primary partition

b 15-20gb primary partition; set this partition to active

c remaining disk space to extended then logical partitions

3 Ghost the "Network reminder Screen Utility" into the first partition

4 Reboot and insert Unattend disk, run the unattend install to the 15-20gb OS partition

I'm hoping to automate this process; I've had no problem getting BartPE to boot and start the partitioning, ghost and formatting... And I can get it to start a windows XP setup from winnt32.exe - however... That's about as much success as I can get. I'm running into either of two problems:

When the Windows Setup commences, even though I've put in the /unattended tag and pointed to my answer file only the GUI setup from BartPE and the first Text-Mode setup screens are unattend, then windows goes back to a stock standard attended install asking me ALL the questions during GUI mode setup.

If I add in the /setuplocal and /tempdrive tags, I can get windows to install unattended; but it then ignores my $OEM$ distribution folders even if I pre-copy them to the hard drive in the same location the windows source files are copied to... Because of this my cmdlines.txt doesn't execute to add registry tags in for windows customization and application installation via runonceex.

Does anyone know how to initiate a windows unattend setup from a BartPE disk with the same level of automation and depth as one started from a Boot CD has?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you may be able to offer!