Is there a way to add Domain users?

[mikebrod]

Is there a way to add Domain users during an unattended install? Does anyone have a script that can add users by prompting for a username?

Can you add a PC to a domain during the unattended install?

[jleonard78]

You can join the computer to a domain easily, as well as add users. My experience thus far, however, has seen the $OEM$ folder not processed. I haven't narrowed yet if it's just the upgrade installs or if the bare installs though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anyhow...here is a copy/paste of the section to add in in WinNT.sif for joining a domain. It has worked flawlessly for me at work thus far.

[identification]

JoinDomain=<DOMAIN NAME>

DomainAdmin=Administrator

DomainAdminPassword=<Admin Password>

As for adding users...the original MSFN Unattended page has some good information on that, and it works fairly well. (everything I've used from those guides works perfect)

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

There's just a few slight differences to make to your cmd file. It all takes some familiarity with your command line stuff for WinNT kernel.

First command in the file is the one to add the user. If you want it to process the account from a domain instead of locally, you need the /domain switch. So instead of:

net user John asdf1234 /add

You would use

net user John asdf1234 /add /domain

For the password prompt, instead of specifying one in the text file, you can use * in place of the actual password.

Similarly, for the second line

net localgroup Administrators John /add

A /domain at the end will process the command from the domain.

If you use roaming profiles, however, you will most likely not want to use the "localgroup" command What good would that do? Instead, removing local from the command (net group xxx), should work. They use the same switches and options. All of this depends on just how your network is set up.

Also, you most likely won't want maxpwage to be set to unlimited. I assume you have passwords expire every x days? So change:

accounts /maxpwage:unlimited

to something like

net accounts /maxpwage:45

for a 45 day expiration.

I HIGHLY recommend playing with these commands first on a machine already installed, to make sure you get the right set of commands that set things up just right for your network setting.