Reinstall from seperate partition

[Corxscrew]

Hello all.

I have decided to experiemnt a little with he unattended installs. I was a bit impressed by (mainly IBM's) some of the "Windows Recovery" deals that came on some OEM computers. It was a second hard disk partition that contained (I presume) a second windows install along with all of the programs and drivers to install on the computer. You would press F11 at startup and select Product Recovery and it would silently do its thing, and twenty minutes later you'd have a pristine Windows reinstalltion. Well, I thought that all that really was was a combination of batch files and unattended installations of Windows/Drivers/Programs etc. So I thought maybe I could make my own. After destroying my main WIn partition several times, I finally got it to where it would install silently from the harddisk. What I did was make three disk partition, C: D:, and E:. C and D were for the main WinXP install. I installed then a very minimal WIndows XP installation on drive E. I created a n E:\SYSREINST directory which mainly mirrored a WinXP CD along with all of the folders and files required for silent reinstallation of Win, Drivers, Programs, etc. using the instructions at the unattended.msfn site (great site by the way, have learned tons.) So, I finally got it to install XP silently to drive C. I did this by creating a batch file that ran at startup on the WinXP on drive E. The file mainly prompted several times for reinstallation, formatted the drives, and ran the following command:

E:\SYSREINST\i386\winnt32.exe /dudisable /syspart:C /tempdrive:C /unattend:E:\SYSREINST\I386\winnt.sif

HOwever, it seems as if none of the files under $OEM$ were copied over. The RunOnceEx.bat file wasn't ran, and no drivers installations occurred. I made sure of all the paths in the winnt.sif and the corresponding files were correct. I even tested the RunOnceEx.bat file on the E: WinXP system and it ran correctly. I set the OemPreinstall=Yes option in the winnt.sif file. I think that it may have something to do with setup not being run from the booted CD, and instead from (E:)WinXP itself.

Any suggestions? I know it seems rather complicated, but I think it's kinda cool to just press a few keys and have Windows reinstall itself even without a CD(if it's possibile).

[ME2U]

You have to specify the location of the $OEM$ file directory in your winnt.sif, You can specify the location of the $OEM$ folder by using the unattend switch OEMFilesPath=

[devil270975]

or you could just put your $OEM$ folder inside the i386 folder no need to change paths. i am trying to do a very similar thing with mine but not having to boot into another os but by changing the way that windows boots (not having too much Success at the moment though) but i am percievering

[Corxscrew]

Well, I got it to work finally.

It's a bit of a workaround more than anything, but it gets the job done. I use a btach file under the [GuiRunOnce] part of winnt.sif that copies the folder with all of the programs and drivers to the %systemdrive% location. IT then runs the registry add file(RunOnceEx.bat) and reboots the system. Upon the next reboot, everything goes rather well as far as installations. I also found that if winnt32.exe is run from a GUI, appartently it ignores most of the "Oem" things in the winnt.sif file. As such, it would not install any drivers through the use of the [OemPnPDriversPath] section of winnt.sif, so you have to just use the RnOnceEx to isntall your drivers. I think that the fact that winnt32.exe ignores most oem switches is the reason for not copying over the $OEM$ folder contents. Its actually quite nice though to just press a few keys at startup and have your system reinstalled silently, without any CDs or anything. Also makes it quite easy to update when new hotfixes, app versions, etc. come out.

Thanks for the help.