To Be Unattended Or Not To Be Unattended...

[peanutismint]

Ok, so I'm a first time poster and first time unnatended-windows-xp-installer. I've created a simple version of what I want to achieve in the end and have just used nLite to rip my XP CD, streamline SP2 into it (sans hotfixes) and apply a bunch of tweaks to it. I also went thru the processes described on here and made my own WINNT.SIF file (shown below). Now it was only after getting through ALL that that i remembered (or was reminded, rather, by nLite) that I couldn't use the 'unattended' part of its creation tools as I have a SATA hard drive and needed to 'F6' at the beginning of setup. So I left that part deselected in nLite but then, some way into the setup procedure carried out on a VM, i got a message: "setup cannot continue until you enter your name." It also said something like 'Administrator and Guest is not allowable'. Now I've set my name in the SIF file to be 'PeanuT', but it won't let me have that either. So I changed it to 'Pea' and we're on our way again, The next screen asked for my reg key... Now I had typed it into the SIF file already in the hopes that I wouldn't have to enter it here ever again. Still, I entered it in, but it kept coming up with 'key you have entered is invalid'...

I'm just wondering, is the fact that I apparently can't get an unattended setup to work something to do with the fact that I chose not to have 'unattended' in the nLite settings (so as I could 'F6' for my SATA driver installs), even though I have added all the necessary lines to my SIF file to enable an unattended install?

;SetupMgrTag
[Data]
    AutoPartition=0
    MsDosInitiated="0"
    UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
    UnattendMode=FullUnattended
    OemSkipEula=Yes
    OemPreinstall=Yes
    UnattendSwitch="yes"
    TargetPath=\WINDOWS
    FileSystem=*
    ProgramFilesDir="D:\Program Files"
    CommonProgramFilesDir="D:\Program Files\Common Files"
    KeyboardLayout="United Kingdom"

[GuiUnattended]
    AdminPassword=*
    EncryptedAdminPassword=NO
    OEMSkipRegional=1
    TimeZone=85
    OemSkipWelcome=1
    ProfilesDir="D:\Documents and Settings\"

[UserData]
    ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
    FullName="PeanuT"
    OrgName="PeaTV"
    ComputerName="PeaTV"

[Display]
    BitsPerPel=32
    Xresolution=1280
    YResolution=1024

[TapiLocation]
    CountryCode=44
    Dialing=Tone
    AreaCode=0191

[RegionalSettings]
    LanguageGroup=1
    Language=00000809

[Identification]
    JoinWorkgroup=HOME

[Networking]
    InstallDefaultComponents=Yes

[Components]
    msmsgs=off
    msnexplr=off
    freecell=off
    hearts=off
    media_clips=off
    minesweeper=off
    pinball=off
    solitaire=off
    spider=off
    zonegames=off

[Shell]
    DefaultThemesOff = Yes
    DefaultStartPanelOff = Yes

[peanutismint]

Ok, so I'm a first time poster and first time unnatended-windows-xp-installer. I've created a simple version of what I want to achieve in the end and have just used nLite to rip my XP CD, streamline SP2 into it (sans hotfixes) and apply a bunch of tweaks to it. I also went thru the processes described on here and made my own WINNT.SIF file (shown below). Now it was only after getting through ALL that that i remembered (or was reminded, rather, by nLite) that I couldn't use the 'unattended' part of its creation tools as I have a SATA hard drive and needed to 'F6' at the beginning of setup. So I left that part deselected in nLite but then, some way into the setup procedure carried out on a VM, i got a message: "setup cannot continue until you enter your name." It also said something like 'Administrator and Guest is not allowable'. Now I've set my name in the SIF file to be 'PeanuT', but it won't let me have that either. So I changed it to 'Pea' and we're on our way again, The next screen asked for my reg key... Now I had typed it into the SIF file already in the hopes that I wouldn't have to enter it here ever again. Still, I entered it in, but it kept coming up with 'key you have entered is invalid'...

I'm just wondering, is the fact that I apparently can't get an unattended setup to work something to do with the fact that I chose not to have 'unattended' in the nLite settings (so as I could 'F6' for my SATA driver installs), even though I have added all the necessary lines to my SIF file to enable an unattended install?

;SetupMgrTag
[Data]
    AutoPartition=0
    MsDosInitiated="0"
    UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
    UnattendMode=FullUnattended
    OemSkipEula=Yes
    OemPreinstall=Yes
    UnattendSwitch="yes"
    TargetPath=\WINDOWS
    FileSystem=*
    ProgramFilesDir="D:\Program Files"
    CommonProgramFilesDir="D:\Program Files\Common Files"
    KeyboardLayout="United Kingdom"

[GuiUnattended]
    AdminPassword=*
    EncryptedAdminPassword=NO
    OEMSkipRegional=1
    TimeZone=85
    OemSkipWelcome=1
    ProfilesDir="D:\Documents and Settings\"

[UserData]
    ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
    FullName="PeanuT"
    OrgName="PeaTV"
    ComputerName="PeaTV"

[Display]
    BitsPerPel=32
    Xresolution=1280
    YResolution=1024

[TapiLocation]
    CountryCode=44
    Dialing=Tone
    AreaCode=0191

[RegionalSettings]
    LanguageGroup=1
    Language=00000809

[Identification]
    JoinWorkgroup=HOME

[Networking]
    InstallDefaultComponents=Yes

[Components]
    msmsgs=off
    msnexplr=off
    freecell=off
    hearts=off
    media_clips=off
    minesweeper=off
    pinball=off
    solitaire=off
    spider=off
    zonegames=off

[Shell]
    DefaultThemesOff = Yes
    DefaultStartPanelOff = Yes

[rendrag]

my understanding/experience has been all correct/valid values in winnt.sif should be automatically entered into the install for you.

If it's asking for your key again, any chance that what is in the winnt.sif is not correct?

you could integrate the SATA driver into your windows install (look in the device drivers forum) and not have to hit f6 at all

[purewaveform]

Well, the AutoPartition=0, and the FileSystem=*, mean that you will have to do somehting. AutoPartition=1 is what you need to do it auto. Dumb, but the key should have 25 chars, you can manually add your sata drivers to the i386 directory, here is how, http://unattended.msfn.org/intermediate/drivers/raid.htm then itshould work.

Also, what version of XP, etc, also there are tools to check your key.

[peanutismint]

Ok, much thanks for the suggestions! Right, I'm gonna try to integrate the SATA drivers (altho I don't really remember which one my computer needs, it's an Abit NF7-S v2 motherboard? Any ideas?!).

As for the product key, sorry, I left a line off when I printed it into here by accident, but it's in full in the main file and it wouldn't accept it. the only thing I can think of is that...it's one of those keys that starts with FCKGW? Would the fact that I've integrated SP2 make Windows cotton on to this? How could I check it?

And for the AutoPartition bit, I purposefully left that as '0' as i want to set up my partitions each time. Unless there's a way I could write something which would auto set the partitions based on what I wrote in a seprate file? Let me know!

Thanks SO much for the newbie help, guys!