Network Unattended Setup

[mccorm79]

I have some questions about a Network Unattended Setup.

1. If I do a network setup, do I modify the winnt.sif file?

2. can I use any network boot disk to start the setup? I do not have WinPE.

[Biggeh]

1. you are using an unattend.txt file (it is the same as winnt.sif but the name dont matter). you can save it on the bootdisk or on a server share. when starting setup you have to use switches to point to the unattend-file.

like: x:\i386\winnt /s:x:\i386 /u:x:\unattend.txt

and yes you should modify it since you want a real unattended setup. you can find a deploy.cab somewhere on the xp-cd - there are helpfiles (like deploy.chm) with all possible entries in the unattend file and a program called setupmgr.exe (i think) which can create an unattend.txt after you made all changes to fit your installation.

2. you can use any dos/win bootdisk. you have to add networkdrivers to be able to connect to the server and to be able to map your install-directory. further you have to partition the hdd and to format before you can start the network-setup. dont forget to load smartdrv after you formatted the hdd but before you start setup!

i am using a win2k server for installation and found a really nice and easy to use/configure win-net-bootdisk here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~bdriver/bootdisk/ which supports about 60 nics.

[mccorm79]

$OEM$

--$1

---DRIVERS

------000_chipset

boot

--unattend.bat

How do I refer to my driver folder in the unattended.txt file? Do I still use Drivers\000_chipset?

[Biggeh]

uhm... i think yes...

just have a look at this one:

http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/oemfolders.htm