can't install office - file not found.

[crimsone]

I've been playing aroound for a good many hours at creating an unattended winXP setup disk with up-to-date hotfixes/patches and a few programs installed.

I've created an $OEM$ folder on the CD root, and created an Office 2003 administrative installation point to the folder ..\$OEM$\1$\Install\Applications\Office2003\

Obviously, I've changed winnt.sif to activate the $OEM$ folders.

I've written the commandlines.txt file in the $OEM$ folder, which calls a file "batch.cmd", which also resides in the $OEM$ folder. The contents of the batch.cmd file are as follows...

Quote:

@ECHO OFF

start /wait $systemdrive$\Install\Applications\Office2003\setuppro.exe TRANSFORMS=Unattended.MST /qb-

...(with setuppro.exe being the correct file)

This (to my mind) should start the office XP installation from the hard drive. A number of switchless installers (adaware, spybot, dvdshirink, jre506...) install at the "registering components" stage from the SVCPACK folder, which should be followed by Office2003. Unfortunately though, I get an error in a cmd window informing me that the file $systemdrive$\Install\Applications\Office2003\setuppro.exe could not be found.

Firstly, have I used the correct path as I think I have? Secondly, is there anything wrong with using commandlines.txt to install like this that I'm not aware of? and finally, does anybody have any idea about what I should do?

All I know at the moment is to thank the heavens for Vmware - without which I'd have run out of DVDs. (I hope I haven't missed something obvious as a result of spending so darned long looking at this!).

Very new here, but any help would be appreciated.

EDIT - Hold on. I'm trying again with $systemdrive$ replaced with %systemdrive%. Maybe that's the culprit. Will report back later.

Edited December 29, 2005 by crimsone

[nakira]

$systemdrive$ should be %systemdrive%

edit: LOL I didn't read down to the edit

Edited December 29, 2005 by nakira

[crimsone]

Yes, that was the problem - it's always the simplest things that catch you out (I should know - this one had me looking at it for hours). Post and solve never fails. lol

Thankyou though.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is that just because you've read it from a reliable source, it doesn't mean that you should automatically assume it's perfect... Mistakes are made sometimes. A more accurate and more specific lesson to be learned though, is that more often than not they aren't, and that you should always READ THINGS THROUGH PROPERLY, as you can see...

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/50/

As you read at the end of the last section, we needed to change the path in the TRANSFORM syntax in order for it to work. Below are the full batch commands you can use, so add these lines to your batch file:

ECHO.

ECHO Installing Office 2003 Professional

ECHO Please wait...

start /wait %systemdrive%\install\Applications\Office2003\setup.exe TRANSFORMS=Unattended.MST /qb-

I don't know how many times I read through that and through my batch script, and STILL missed the fact that I'd managed to use $ instead of % in that line.

Edited December 29, 2005 by crimsone