Win7 Unattended / Frustrated / Can be as hard as I'm making it ?

[torpex77]

OK. I'm about ready to punt on this whole unattended windows 7 install thing.

All I'm trying to do is have Windows 7 go through a basic install with no prompts, then run a script at the end of it. I'm tasked with windows sysadmin tasks for a small company - a dozen laptops.

It simply can't be as hard as I'm making it. I have to be missing something. I've read pages and pages of posts here. Various bits of Microsoft documentation.

Today, among other things, I went though the "microsoft step-by-step" guide. Created a "reference" image, sysprep, etc, and ended up with a custom boot install on USB. I put it in and boot and of course it still prompts for everything. I see various unattended.xml files, which seem to be able to provide answers to all of those prompts, but don't have any idea how to get windows to use them. I tried putting one on a USB drive then booting from my original install media, but that seemed to do absolutely nothing.

I have to be missing something fundamental.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[uid0]

various unattended.xml

Try renaming it autounattend.xml ?

[torpex77]

Progress!!!!

a. create bootable USB drive (using the instructions in the Create a Bootable UFD section of the Microsoft "Building a Standard Image of Windows 7" document

b. copy all the files from my Windows 7 install media to the USB drive

c. create an Autounattended.xml file (I hand-edited an example, but I guess WAIK could do that too

d. copy the Autounattended.xml file to the root of the bootable USB drive

e. boot from USB

Presto, unattended Win7.

The only thing I was prompted for was to format the HD, but I might leave that in just as a safety measure.

I think at this point it's just a matter of tweaking a few things, mainly to run my application install script from a network share.

I feel much better...

Edited April 17, 2010 by torpex77

[kai4785]

The hard lesson I only just learned was that your (auto)unattend.xml file is paired with the install.wim file that you are using to install/image from.

Personally, I run a Linux shop, and do automated installs of Linux quite frequently, so I already had a PXE environment built. Adding Windows 2008 R2 to the mix is possible, and took quite a bit of reading official documentation to get working. I can author the XML files with WAIK, and store the XML file on a network share, then run 'setup.exe /unattend:\<path>\Whatever.xml' from WinPE. I can open the install.wim file from the DVD, or from the Network Share folder where I unpackaged the DVD. Both generate correct XMLs that should work.