winnie Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Hi GuyZ, Is it possible to install windows xp unattended from my hd or from another pc in the LAN?I think it is possible by using the deploy tools, but has anyone allready tried this?It should reduce the installation time...Thanx for the info.Winnie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getwired Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 Are you just trying to do this on one machine? More than one? Have you used WinPE before?You can do an unattended installation from CD, from within DOS or WinPE (or BartPE), or using RIS... more info and I might be able to recommend something to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SovereignScorn Posted November 24, 2004 Share Posted November 24, 2004 Over the network with RIS I'm pretty sure you're going to have 2k/2k3 server. But ya, its easy to install from hard drive, theres just one problem I've come across. If you have a hard drive to use just for installations then you can do a fresh install of windows, and make a ghost image on that drive. Problem is that if you try to ghost to a computer with a different motherboard, its going to blue screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winnie Posted November 24, 2004 Author Share Posted November 24, 2004 I don't want to use an image. I'd like to make a small boot cd which starts the install from HD. Maybee it's even possible to run the setup from \\wks-x\install\ in the network...When using the HD solution the install proces should speed up a lot...thanx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getwired Posted November 24, 2004 Share Posted November 24, 2004 Using an image will speed up the process the most. Running setup for every system you install is very time consuming.RIS installs are traditionally faster than CD, if you have the network capacity. If you have access to WinPE, you can easily use that to boot from CD, and start setup (winnt32) from an external USB or 1394 HDD... Can also connect to a UNC share and run setup from there as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tguy Posted November 24, 2004 Share Posted November 24, 2004 Here are some ideas of how to do what you are trying to accomplish.1) Create a share on the PC where you want to hold the installation files for Windows and other programs you may want to install.2) Copy the files to the share as outlined at http://unattended.msfn.org. The biggest difference will be you will need to move the $OEM$ folder into the i386 directory instead of having at the root of the share. Create your unattend file, batch files, and scripts as outlined.3) Install and configure network cards in the PC where your source files are and in the PC where you want to install Windows and the other apps. to. Connect them with a crossover ethernet cable.4) Using a BartPE boot CD or Bart's boot disk (http://www.nu2.nu) create a CD or disk to boot from that will allow you to connect to the PC where your source files are located.5) After the boot CD or disk is created, place it in the PC to be built and boot it. Connect to the source PC. 6) Partition and format the drive on the PC.7) Start the installation with: winnt /b /u:<path to unattend.txt> /s:<path to share where source files are>Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SovereignScorn Posted November 24, 2004 Share Posted November 24, 2004 Ok, well, if you really want to run the isntall from hdd then there is a way I just thaught of. Try gettng the HDD, and putting dos as the bootable OS on it. Then have an autoexec.bat file set to auto run i386\winnt.exe and that should work. Only problem is that thats going to take a long a** time to write the winnt.exe unattended file. But running from hard drive wouldnt really help your speed that much. It should only increase by a few mbps, and would only help you in txtsetup mode. Same with network install, but the advantage of a network install is that you save yourself from media. But to install from the network like you were talking about I'm pretty sure you would need 2K/3 server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tguy Posted December 3, 2004 Share Posted December 3, 2004 You do NOT need a 2000 or 2003 server. The source files can be stored on any file share that you can access with your boot disk, be it another Windows NT/2000/XP desktop or an NT4/2000/2003 server or a Novell server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Refthoom Posted December 4, 2004 Share Posted December 4, 2004 @winnieI think you may be overlooking something. Afaik when you make an installable hdd with winnt32 from an PE environment, there's no way to integrate SATA/RAID drivers which are neccesary on most new PC's today. In other words, a PC cannot boot from a RIS or alike prepared hdd without the SATA/RAID drivers being in memory, which it can't load from hdd because it has no drivers in memory... Or maybe I'm the one overlooking something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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