Copying Favorites during Unattended Installation

[tcsdoc]

I've been very busy on the forums and really appreciate all the help from others in my efforts to create an unattended install for XP. All is perfect execpt for a way to copy the Favorites from the cd to the user account called Sam. I read about using winzip and it's very complicated. Surely there is a simple way to do this from the batch.bat file. All my efforts have been unsuccessful. Any ideas from anyone?

[jrzycrim]

Try making a folder in the in the $OEM$ folder:

$OEM$\C\Documents and Settings\Sam\

Drag your favorites from your Sam folder on your Local HD to the Sam folder in the above path.

I think this will work. If you are installing onto a different partition or drive, D:\ for example, you will have to change the $oem$\C\... to $oem$\d\...

The only problem with this method is, if you wanted to do another install on a drive\partition other than what you chose originally, then the favorites will end up in the wrong place. If you intend to always install XP in the same place, then it won't matter.

Cheers,

[killerbee]

hi,

i would recommend a WinRAR-sfx that is extracted to %userprofile%\wherever\you\want\to\copy\it\under\Sam-Account automatically.

cya

Killer Bee

[[BM]Crusher]

jrzycrim, you could just put it in the

$OEM$\$1\Documents and Settings\Sam\Favorites

folder ($1 defaults to the drive windows is installed to)

but, I agree with killerbee... a self extracting (silently) rar or zip archive that extracts to the

%userprofile%\Favorites

folder would do the trick the best...

just make sure that you run the self extractor after the first boot through RunOnce (so it logs in with the user name) or it will put it in the Administrator folder (if run from cmdlines.txt)

[jrzycrim]

Thanks BM, I thought there might be away to specify the installation drive. I was just to lazy to look it up. At any rate, I knew someone else would post a correction if my method was wrong or sloppy.

I agree a SFX archive is ultimately the best way to go. However, tcsdoc mentioned that it seemed too complicated so I offered the easiest method I could think of.

Edit: Actually, I can't believe I missed that. Hell, Install and Drivers are already in my $1 folder. Doh!

Cheers,

[[BM]Crusher]

fair enuff

[tcsdoc]

Thanks for the input and direction. I've got it working now. I used the following solution by combining your suggestions.

I copied the favorites into the Install folder and used this command to place it in the correct folder.

COPY "%systemdrive%\Install\Favorites\*.*" "%userprofile%\Favorites"

I'm not savy enough on the installation process to realize where to put this line in the batch.bat file because it made a difference. Placing this line towards the end of the batch.bat file didn't work. So I moved it before my entries for installing the registry tweaks and it worked. The %userprofile% variable really helped out alot.

Thanks again for everyone's help.