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Unattended Windows XP by Network/LAN


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Followed all the instructions on the Unattended Install guide:

http://unattended.msfn.org/

And that's all good

but I'm trying to do an unattended via a Ghost (v.8) "Drive Mapping" Boot disk

as suggested by:

http://www.svrops.com/svrops/documents/xpunattend.htm

and I'll tell you...his boot disk doesnt work and neither does the Ghost Disk

allow me to clarify...

I can mount the folder (with the ghost disk only) no problem...

(access everything no problem)

but if i try to run the unattend.bat

its says it can't be run in dos

I've set the MsDosInitiated="0" flag to 1

still nothing

also was trying to run mapdrive.cmd just prior to unattend.bat

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...8+CS+Unattended

(trying to make it part of the same batch)

and i get a bunch of "Out of environment space/Syntax error/Bad command or filename" stuff

maybe i should have called this topic "Unattended Floppy Disk" but seeing as theres no topic for unattended lan and that's what this is about really...might as well be here :)

(And i'm not too interested in getting into WinPE just yet..because i've spent over a week on all this already)

I'm in a real hurry to finish this up so i can finally test everything

(and has to be unattended by lan) so i can get my dad's box back to him lol

So i hope someone can answer this one :rolleyes:

Please :D

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also one more note/related request: :)

I'm sure i'm not the only person interested in doing this, so also interested to know if anyone could point us in the right direction to make the above into a bootable cd? (just the booting and running mapdrive and unnattend.bat to initiate the install)

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Just based on a quick read of the basics, and extra info you've added, I can guess that your unattend.bat file is trying to run winnt32.exe, which is the windows file, rather than the winnt.exe, which is the one that runs under DOS mode - simple to fix and test at least.

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ok! we're one a little closer now thnx :)

It gets upto the blue install screen saying:

"An Internal Setup Error has occurred."

"Could not find a place for a swap file"

"Setup cannot continue...blahblah"

Well, That's never happened to me before. Even if the drives are unformatted and in this case there are 5 partitions on the drive (all formated ntfs and only two of which have active pagefiles 1 soon to be blown away by this unattended install) and enough space is available on all drives (excluding the floppy) :rolleyes: including the mounted one (with correct permissions of course).

anyone? :D

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here is the deal, from now on we work together, cuz i have had the same faults etc.

U have to make sure the bootdisk loads the drivers without loosing to much conventional memory, because it is needed for the execution of winnt.exe

1st u need to create a bootdisk, i see u have done this with Ghost, i did to and it worked perfectly when i added emm386.exe to it, it created approx 460K of free conventional memory which is enough.

the better option for a Ghostdisk is a bootfloppy provided by Techdata

The disk contains almost the same thingys as the ghostdisk does even the same connection method, but it handles your memory better...

2nd u have to make sure the primary partition is a FAT32. When this is not the case include 2 things in your distribution share:

  • EAFDISK
  • Format from windows98/95 or whatever

3rd but absolutely not least smartdrv.exe

Load smartdrive before executing ure unattended network install, this greatly improves the loading and copying time of files etc.

After all these steps, my problem is that i need to execute winnt.exe whitout any reboots etc. i don't know how to achieve this

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here is the deal, from now on we work together, cuz i have had the same faults etc.
Sup! Sure! why not? :D
U have to make sure the bootdisk loads the drivers without loosing to much conventional memory, because it is needed for the execution of winnt.exe

be nice to know exactly how much memory.

Actually had a problem with memory already trying to get mapdrive.cmd to run as part of the batch before the install and emeds mentioned this:

File config.sys

shell=C:\cmd.com /P /E:nnn

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18087&st=0

but i'll tell you now that 8192 is too much it seems as NET.EXE almost fails (can't remember exactly what it said/did but i still had connectivity)

I set it for 2048 and no errors now it'd be nice to know exactly what to set it at, maybe that would help?

i did to and it worked perfectly when i added emm386.exe to it
k i saw that this guy used emm386 also;

http://www.svrops.com/svrops/documents/xpu...end.htm#netboot

(i think emm386 has some switches too, anyone know what they are?)

but even when i modified his disk to use the intel pro/100 drivers (E100B.DOS ) (latest from intel) I have both old and new sets of these drivers and neither of them worked on the other guys disk)...(old one didnt work with ghost tho -reason for my downloading the newer ones)...maybe because the latest ones are NDIS2? I'm not sure.

You wouldnt just happen to be using the same drivers would ya? hehe

So seeing as the ghost disk works properly i'd think it was best to stick to that so..

Tried copying over the the emm386 from the svrops dude's disk it would not load via the ghost disk. Now i have alot of DOS disks upto MS-PC Dos 6.22 but I'm pretty sure i do not have PC-DOS 6.22 the PC Dos that ghost uses.

Maybe you could email me the emm386 version your using.

the better option for a Ghostdisk is a bootfloppy provided by Techdata

if the ghost one with the emm386 works perfectly then I'd rather not try to mess with a 3rd disk unless i have no choice but to have to.

2nd u have to make sure the primary partition is a FAT32. When this is not the case include 2 things in your distribution share:
  • EAFDISK

  • Format from windows98/95 or whatever

3rd but absolutely not least smartdrv.exe

k well I really do not see why that would be necessary if the setup can format the drive itself with diskpart if you wanted it to, so i would need more clarification on that before i would consider doing so.

I noticed smartdrv was on srvops dude's disk, but does anyone know if its absolutely (definately) needed?

After all these steps, my problem is that i need to execute winnt.exe whitout any reboots etc. i don't know how to achieve this

Ok maybe you could post/email your boot disk? :)

And executing without reboots, hmmmm, please tell me there arent going to be anymore issues to deal with! :rolleyes:

Is winnt.exe rebooting before it finishes installing everything? Or are you just trying to implement/install/set everything before it reboots?

Your scaring me man! lol

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well, i've got the s*** to work finally...

believe me, the techdata flop works like a dream, i bet that the intel100pro card will be loaded just fine, the maker has finetuned the memory management of the flop thus bringing as much conventional up as possible!!!

Right now my installation works perfectly no hangups or errors what so ever...

About smartdrv, i absolutely recomend you to use it because it speeds up filetransfer, without it the installation will take a whole day.

i can't remember that i could execute winnt.exe without having a primary fat, anyway if u fat the partition and then add the line

filesystem=convertntfs

to your winnt.sif then everything should be installed on a NTFS disk when u are ready!

Edit: Format isn't needed, u can formatfat:1: in Aefdisk

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But what about that reboot problem you were having? :)

Euhm, i was a little bit impatient there, actually i don't have any problems with rebooting, the unattended install works like a dream right now, i'm finally blessed with a working method!!!

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k its working, sortof :)

those guys who made that network disk did an ok job, cept for the fact that you have to re-enter the network details each time,

but one importan thing they should do is change the ramdrive stuff to pick a free letter from Z back heh

had to format as fat32 because that smart script kept assigning the ramdrive as C: lol

now the ramdrive sits on D: (also stupid) so anyway :rolleyes: it helps...

So, unattend.bat startsup and starts copying files.....copies a few (see a few names go by) and then it just stops/hangs there

any ideas??

hope it doesnt have to be fat16 now or does it lol :D

the other possibility is i've reconfigured my common/program files dirs to default to D:\ and thats where the ramdrive is :D

anyone know how to change the %RAMDRV% variable in this batchfile/s so that it goes backwards when selecting a Drive Letter? (I need it to be on X or U or something far away like that heh)

SETRAMD.BAT

SETRAMD.BAT

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for your info...

Did u start smartdrive, otherwise the "hang" could take a long while

i did it without smartdrive took the computer 3 hours to begin the next session to copy, it looked like the system hanged itself up but that wasn't so...

Be patient, and use SMARTDRIVE, really i mean it

EDIT: the installation is failed when u get a nice divide by 0 error or something like that...

BTW keep ure hands of the machine and make sure that after u started the installatation to get the floppy disk out of the drive...

i don't know on what kind of machine you are working on, i'm testing on a PII 350 Mhz 128 MB ram and a 10Mbit networkcard (it takes about 1,5 hour to install)

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