winnt.sif and format

[tetix]

I'm a Greek new member to your community and have some questions about the unattended XP cd which i decided to write here as this is a very close topic to what i'd like to ask.

Well, i have two disks (30 and 120GB)

The first is divided in 3 partitions (6 GB for winXP, 4 GB for winME and 20 for misc.)

The second one is divided in 2 parts (80 for movies and 40 for games)

I have configured my system to be dual boot with Bootmagic 8. I guess that the second drive (120 GB) doesn't play that much a role in the whole operation, right?

Now, i want help for writing my winnt.sif file, as i would like the setup to automatically format the partition with Windows XP installed and set up windows XP SP2 there.

With the common options it will format the first drive without an OS, ok? (but that's my precious misc. So, what should i do?

1) Every time i want to reinstall windows xp format the partition and then normally install windows with my UA CD or

2) are there proper entries i should enter in winnt.sif? For this solution i believe that i would first have to set the windows xp partition active and then restart with "boot from CD" enabled.

I look forward to your answers as i would like to test my CD... TU

[Yzöwl]

Just let it request the partition to format etc. and leave everything else unattended.

e.g.

[Data]
    AutomaticUpdates=Yes
    AutoPartition=0
    MsDosInitiated="0"
    UnattendedInstall="Yes"

P.S.

I'm a Greek

[tetix]

Thanks for your answer, but can't it be fully unattended??? Is it possible?

If not, I'd better format the drive first where windows xp are installed and then set up windows from the CD.

By the way, the code to type in this case what should be? (I mean if I want the setup to search for the first available drive without an OS and install windows there)

[neuro42]

I am also interested in this.

I have a 120GB HDD primary I want formatted into 3 partitions NTFS

one 20GB for windows, one ~50 GB for Documents and settings and one ~50GB for Program Files

This way I can kep my pictures and My music in the D&S folder and all my progs and games in the prog files folder (keeping everything nice and neat for XP.

As it is now I am using WinXPE Bootdisk and preformatting before inserting the unattended disk...

[mythosaz]

Probably the answer is a multi-bootable CD/DVD with CD-Shell. You're probably going to have to partition, and then have CD-Shell look for the partition structure you want before doing an "unnended to first empty partition" install.