Unattended install of XP from flash disk

[chata]

Hi

I have created an unattended install of win xp and it has to install from flash disk. I have made the flash disk boot to dos prompt just like win9x startup diskette would do. And it goes well up to copying of setup files that's when it stops without any error message. I decided to remove the flash disk and found that in it were created some temp files/folders for xp boot/install including boot.ini, bootsect.dos, ntdetect.com, ntldr...

and I finally realised that the flash disk is C: drive and this was the reason why it was installing to itself.

is there a way of changing the prompt of bootable flash disk to something else other than C: drive? so tht when it boot, it deletes partition, creates partition (this should be C: drive and not any other letter)?

For now it boots and does the following:

- deletes all partitions

- creates one partition and formats it then restarts

- after restarting it was supposed to start copying setup files to the created and formatted partition (which seems to be done but does not go anywhere and stops) these some files which were copied were found to be in flash disk itsels - so it were installing to itself.

Please also find batch file(unattend.bat) which is executed by the autoexec.bat

@echo off

cls
:: Set environmental variables
set AnswerFile=c:\unattend.txt
set SetupFiles=c:\i386

if exist flag\flag.txt goto INSTALL

echo.
echo      Your PC is ready for installation
echo.
echo      ALL data will be lost.
echo.
echo      Do you want to continue (Y/N)?
echo.

yn.com
if not errorlevel 1 goto STOP
goto PART


@call createpart.bat

echo Gdisk was Run > flag\flag.txt

reboot.com
goto END


:INSTALL

If exist flag\flag.txt del flag\flag.txt

::Start the Windows XP Install
c:
cd\
i386\winnt.exe /u:%AnswerFile% /s:%SetupFiles%
goto END


:STOP
cls
echo.
echo User Terminated Install
echo.
cd\
goto END

:END

Thanks.

Chata.

[jaclaz]

Hi

I have created an unattended install of win xp and it has to install from flash disk.

With all due respect, that is a very "old" way to install XP from flash (by running DOS, and from it WINNT.EXE, which forces to use FAT/FAT32 filesystem)

The "base" instructions for that method are given here:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16713

In the meantime, a number of "other" ways were found/feveloped.

Mainly, you can use grub4dos to re-map drives and starting the DOS from a floppy or .iso image (i.e. avoiding the drive letter problem) but, better than that use "native" XP install from USB device, several methods listed here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=157

jaclaz