Customise winnt.sif before the Setup starts !

[Jazz]

Hi this is my first post on this forum, but i'm already quite familiar with the unattended part of xp, i've also made a sysprep image of my default installation but i still wanna achieve a perfect unattended xp install cd

So the thing was that i already have my winnt.sif, but i wanna do something so that i can actually customise the winnt.sif before i start my setup..

Some idea regarding the situation i have is that, u can use a 98 boot disk that'll create the ramdisk for you, then using a siimple batch file and the echo command, you can quite customise the winnt.sif to your liking and use the winnt paramater to use this winnt.sif..

NOW the problem is that i dont have a floppy drive, and i wanna customise it in such a way so that it works even if there is no partition on the hdd

The only doubt that i'm having is that if i make the winnt.sif in the ramdisk , then when the setup reboots , will it still recognise the winnt.sif file (as the ramdisk will no longer exist )?? or will it just go to a normal install ?

If anyone has better ideas for this pls let me know

Bye,

Jazz

[JPamplin]

Actually, the WINNT.SIF file is read during the initial file copy (before the first reboot), so your question about having the RAMDisk around after Phase I is moot, I would think.

Anyone around that can verify this?

JP

[RyanVM]

It sounds like he's saying that you boot from a floppy and execute a batch file which creates the winnt.sif file using echo commands then executes winnt.exe to start setup.

[Jazz]

Well not exactly..

what i plan to do is boot form the boot disk (from my cd) then i'll run some batch file to detect the drive letter for my cd it';ll probably be c: as there will be no partition on the hdd..

SO, in this case i cannot write the winnt.sif to the hdd, if i would be doin that then this post would not be here, as i know that using the default switch for winnt i can use a winnt.sif on my floppy or hdd (any location thats gonna be permaent even after the reboot) but the case here is that i'm planning to create the winnt.sif on the ramdisk thats gonna be deleted along with the reboot...

So what i wanted to know is that does windows actually copy the winnt.sif to the temporary files along with all the other setup files ? or does it still refer to it from the same location

The advantage of this is that you get a sure shot method of customising the winnt.sif regardless of the partitions on the hdd... (unless you install using PE)

I hope i make my post clear this time

Bye,

Jazz

[cje]

it will copy the file to the hard drive while it is copying the other files.

[serialzs]

you can do it by putting WINNT.SIF in floppy drive...

before winxp install it will search a file in floppy...

i try it before i bought my burner...

-=[serialzs]=-

[Alanoll]

you can do it by putting WINNT.SIF in floppy drive...

before winxp install it will search a file in floppy...

i try it before i bought my burner...

-=[serialzs]=-

some people just never read.....

NOW the problem is that i dont have a floppy drive, and i wanna customise it in such a way so that it works even if there is no partition on the hdd

that was in his first post in this thread.

And like cje said, WINNT.SIF will get copied from the RAMDISK to your HDD during WindowsXP file copy process (the blue dos screen part). And then if you look even further just for fun, Windows then saves it in like System32 as $winnt$ i think

[[BM]Crusher]

is there a program to capture user text input correctly?

I have been playing around with copying text files together to make a winnt.sif but i need a better method of capturing the text (it works great when i do it myself, but it would be confusing for other people i imagine)

this is just example I typed up to show you the text capture command and copy command

@echo offecho Type your Full Name: echo Press Enter, F6, Enter when finished . . .for /f "usebackq delims=" %%i IN (`more`) DO echo %%i >Name.tmpcopy "winnt1.txt + Name.txt + Name.tmp + Org.txt + Org.tmp + Comp.txt + Comp.tmp + winnt2.txt" wint.sif

the only problem is that the copy command leaves an escape character in the newly created winnt.sif file... apart from the escape character at the end of the file I have successfully tested this method of winnt.sif creation based on user input

[Jazz]

Well thanks guys, now i almost know what i needed to know

Well it does save it in the windows dir as $winnt$.inf or something like that !

Hmm, i htink that opens up many possibilities to customise the setup before hand so that you dont loose on the customisation aswell retain maxium unattended'ness during the install..

Well the app that i think will be best to capture user info is input.com from the creator of wbat, or even more, if some of you'll whos good at wbat, can even take some time out and make a small menu in wbat so that we get the options of modifing the winnt.sif in gui

Well if not, then i still like doin it the leet way, Black box (CMD)...

So, the things that can be customised BEFORE the setup starts are the User data, the cd-key, components to include or exclude.., and the apps that are gonna be installed during the GUI - Runonce, i hope you get the idea of where i'm goin

so once the setup starts, no bothering at all, till everything is finally finished....

Now thats what i call a Unattended CD.

I hope someone can come up with more creative ideas as of how to utilise this situation.

Bye,

Jazz

[Alanoll]

I hope someone can come up with more creative ideas as of how to utilise this situation.

They have It's called Windows PE. lol.

[Jazz]

LOl, well i was actually thinking of a menu in DOS !!, so that it looks leet, or something like that ...

Anyways, i dont like the idea of installing win xp from PE, it takes a lot of time...

BTW, i got a question.. if i boot directy from cd and run win install, 1st time some temp files are copied, pc restarts, and then the setup starts..

But if i boot to dos and then start the setup then 1st time the files are copied, pc restarts, then again the files are copied somewhere, the pc restarts and the 3rd time the setup starts...

is there any way so that i can prevent the 2 file copying processes ?? maybe by passing a switch to not to use temp files or something !

This can save a lot of time,.

Bye,

Jazz

[[BM]Crusher]

where can i get this input.com and wbat from? i searched google and found jack

wait a minute... i found wbat on bart's page

[[BM]Crusher]

input.com says it doesn't work with 2k/xp, so you can only use it during the dos based section that boots from a 98 disk?

[Alanoll]

BTW, i got a question.. if i boot directy from cd and run win install, 1st time some temp files are copied, pc restarts, and then the setup starts..

But if i boot to dos and then start the setup then 1st time the files are copied, pc restarts, then again the files are copied somewhere, the pc restarts and the 3rd time the setup starts...

is there any way so that i can prevent the 2 file copying processes ?? maybe by passing a switch to not to use temp files or something !

This can save a lot of time,.

dunno......

if you install from anything but from booting via CD, it copies the install files to $Winnt~LS$ and then to their proper locations on the second run.

There might be a switch, it's always good to search Microsoft KB for it. They usually know those sort of things.

[Jazz]

Hmm, well allanol , i'm not very good when it comes to searching at mskb articles, so could you help me by searching it ? or perhaps someone else know's how to achieve this !

Umm, Crusher, i use nset util for acceting input from teh user in xp, perhaps you can search for it..., but the pitfall is that it creates temp files.. so i dunno how much that'll affect you..

Find useful dos utils at

Dos Utils

Bye,

Jazz