Unattended CD Boot Question

[duomenox]

First of all I apologize for not doing much research, my dealine for this project has been bumped WAY up.

I was curious to know if anyone has modified the bootfix.bin (the file that prompts you to "Press any key to boot from CD...") so that it will check for a file on the hard drive before prompting?

Basically, I want to have a CD automatically boot unless it can find a file on the hard drive. I need to make a 100% unattended install cd for windows xp (which I have completed) but the CD requires a reboot after ghosting the HD. I do not want users to have to press any key to boot from the CD, but I don't want it to keep looping at the ghost phase.

(I have to use ghost because of some smecific utility partitions and I don't want to use WinPE or BartPE)

Ideally, the CD would boot, ghost the empty HD Image with a fully set up partition table and clean formatted partitions (and a file called restored.dat)

The PC automatically reboots, then when the CD starts to boot again, it finds the Restored.dat file on the HD and allows the computer to boot from the HD instead of the CD... where the XP install is already waiting to continue.

Any Ideas?

Thanks for the help.

[Jito463]

The disc will only prompt you to press a key if there is an existing install on the HDD. If there's nothing on the HDD, the installer will just run without a prompt. If you're asking if there's a way to suppress the Press any key message even if an install exists, I don't know.

[BrandonS_Mil]

If you check out this post... it disscusses the use of the Bootfix.bin file.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=34560

Hope this helps.