easy autounattended.xml generator

[Jadestar]

So I'm kinda dissappointed with vlite and waik. They just seem a bit more complicated than I'm looking for. I guess my issue with them is that they want to build isos and images and all this extra stuff that I already have and dont need.

What I'm looking for is something that will ask me questions about the vista install and take the provided answers and make an autounattended.xml (or hoever it's spelled). I already have my vista source that Im leaving untouched and all my other tweaks will take place with registry files once vista is booted.

Anyone know of such a thing?

[leen2]

Not that I know of.

So I wrote my own equivalent, basically an HTA as a graphical interface to a set of VBscripts that take the input from the HTA and write out the settings required line by line into an unattend.xml file, then kick of the install. For our implementation I also hacked ADSI support into WinPE so that I could query our Active Directory infrastructure and verify domain credentails and rights so that the machine would be added to the domain and OU specified during Windows setup in an unattended join.

The scripts I wrote also allow you to change IP settings in WinPE, that then get added to the Unattend.xml file used during the install. And I wrote this to cover OS Server versions from Windows 2000 through Windows Server 2008. While you are interested in Vista, it is essentially the same as Server 2008. To use this the method of install we use is to run Winnt32.exe (2003 OS and earlier) or setup.exe (2008 OS) with the /unattend command line switch pointing to unmodified source media on a network share.

While I can't just give you what I wrote as it is specific to the organization I work for, I can give you pointers on pieces of it so you can achieve approximately the same thing with some work if you are experienced with VBscript and HTA.