Multi-Unattended

[Screwz Luse]

Alright, I've done some searching and reading but haven't been able to come up with a solution that works. I'm trying to have 3 unattended versions of Windows XP.

1.) My original XP that installs the .NET framework silently and a few other helpful applications and files

2.) An unattended XP for my desktop, installs many drivers, applications, modified files, etc.

3.) An unattended XP for my notebook, installs drivers, applications, etc.

What I'm trying to do is use the same i386 folder for my notebook installation as number 1 but I'm having trouble as both use $OEM$ folders. I renamed both $OEM$ folders so they don't conflict but the problem is in winnt.sif. I can't get the OemFilesPath to work properly. I've tried the following:

OemFilesPath="%CDROM%\SETUP\WinXP\Professional\Pro\$OEM$"

OemFilesPath="%SYSTEMDRIVE%\SETUP\WinXP\Professional\Pro\$OEM$"

OemFilesPath="..\SETUP\WinXP\Professional\Pro\$OEM$"

OemFilesPath="D:\SETUP\WinXP\Professional\Pro\$OEM$"

But none worked. My directory structure is attached. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW: These are all for clean installs, I don't do the upgrade thing. heh..

[os2fan2]

You could use BartPE.

I imagine if you uncompressed, but left name-unchanged, those files that BartPE uses, you could reduce the size of the image with -duplicates-once.

You then set up the assorted oem-installs, say in a ramdrive, and then use some of script to build the oemfiles in ramdrive. Or since we're using -duplicates-once, you could then have something like

\laptop\$oem$ vs \penning\$oem$ vs \porky\$oem$

You then have the unattend.cmd and unattend.txt, and launch the commands from bartpe. To boot, you also have a rescue disk. I also do a delsetup.cmd at the same time, for removing undesirable setups.

I do this in this way, except i copy the source files to hard drive, and have the oem-files separately. The unattend.txt and unattend.cmd files are built from a common source-file, that has embedded in it the locations of the $oem$ directories.

This allows you to upgrade the $oem$ and i386 trees separately, while still doing an unattended install.

[tjhart85]

You really don't need to make things quite so difficult. You can just make you UA-XP-CD install apps from the CD-ROM instead of the hard disc. Then you just make a different batch file (I use WIHU that references batch files), for each installation.

The first batch file will be

1.) My original XP that installs the .NET framework silently and a few other helpful applications and files

and so forth....

Hope this helps and I didn't misunderstand what you wanted.

[engjcowi]

just to add an idea i use easyboot to install all my windows, bartpe, erd etc... and i was under the impression that the optimize function "took away" if you will the duplicate files and just had one reference??? am i wrong??? if not the couldnt you make multiple copies of win xp with the different settings and then compile them all onto once cd and use the optimize function to save the space?

well if i am wrong i apologise and could someone explain what the optimise function does? pls