Upgrading Windows 2000 Pro to XP Pro

[MaxWilder]

Like another member recently, I am also doing a massive rollout of Windows XP Pro. And they just decided they wanted to upgrade (from 2000 pro) instead of a clean install.

Here's the problem I'm hitting, and I hope it's simple...

The whole unattended upgrade worked fine using the NtUpgrade=Yes and OemPreinstall=No in my sif file. (Of course I also had to remove all mentions of custom files.)

But when the new OS gets to the logon screen (ctrl-alt-del), the mouse will work, but any key pressed will cause the keyboard to lock and the mouse will stop functioning. However, the shutdown sequence initiatied by the button on the front of the case works fine.

This problem didn't happen during the clean installs I was testing before. I'm thinking it might have something to do with a NIC driver that doesn't come on the xp cd.

Anyone have any ideas what causes this?

[MaxWilder]

Ok, it appears that this problem is being caused by the NIC. I just tested it without the [identification] lines to join our domain, and it installed fine. The network card is built into the motherboard, and the driver is not included on the XP install disc.

Since this is an upgrade, is there any chance I could plant the appropriate drivers in the Win2k directory so that the XP installation will automatically pick up the appropriate drivers? Where would they go?

I'd rather not mess around with the .cab's on the XP install disc. I tried it once with poor results. But if that's the only way I'll try it again.

Suggestions?

[ctconline]

Can I ask what you did to get the installation working with the sif file? What needs to be in the sif file besides the two lines you mentioned? Thank you.

[MaxWilder]

I'm not exactly sure what "needs" to be in there. I originally started out with a sif file designed for a clean install, so it has almost everything needed for a brand new installation.

I took that file, added the line NtUpgrade=Yes and changed OemPreinstall=No. Then I commented out all mentions of custom files, anything from the OEM folder. Any other lines that are not needed are probably simply ignored. I suspect that very few other lines need to be there. Maybe just the ProductID.

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I have since figured out that the Win2000 install was using a NIC driver that was incompatible with XP. However, it could be updated in Win 2000, then XP can upgrade just fine.

So here's my new question: Is there any way to automate the upgrading of a device driver in Windows 2000, say from a batch file?

Please, I don't want to maually update a driver on every machine in my office.

[MaxWilder]

In case anybody was curious, I was able to upgrade the device driver by using devcon.exe from Microsoft. The documentation kinda sucks, but my boss and I finally got it to work using the command line:

devcon update <path and .inf name> <hardware id to update>

...and that was put in the .bat before winnt32 was called, so the upgraded XP was able to use the new driver.

Devcon also has a bunch of other tools which may be useful, but you'll have to figure those out for yourself.