USB Flash Drive Unattended not possible!

[willpantin]

Well, I thought I would save a lot of people a lot of time...!

After extensive research and testing, I can say that as of March 9, 2006, it seems it is NOT POSSIBLE to do a fully unattended install of Windows XP from a USB Flash Drive (known also as a "pen drive", or "flash key drive").

I am aware of the many links and tutorials on installing Windows XP on the Flash Drive itself. That is not what we are talking about (Tom's Hardware, Bart PE).

I also was able to easily format the USB Flash Drive into an active partition that boots to DOS on machines that allow booting from USB. You can then do a regular (not unattended) install of Windows XP by starting WINNT.EXE. But, no winnt.sif install, meaning no additional programs can be installed. So, that is not what we are talking about either...!

(I am just glad I did not mess up my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB Flash drive with all my formatting tests...!)

PS. I know there are other posts on the subject, but they all mislead people into thinking it's possible.

I felt it was time to start a clean thread that summarizes everything people might learn from following other threads on the subjet.

[mmarable]

You're not going to be able to treat this like an automated CD. You'll need to use the Winnt.exe parameters to perform an automated install.

If I remember correctly it's someting like "/unattend=<path to unattended file>\<filename>.txt

The text file is nothing more than WinNT.sif, so there's nothing special about it.

Hope this helps to get you on your way.

[willpantin]

mmarable,

Thanks for your reply. Your tip does help, and I might try a few things along those lines.

However, right now this method has a big obstacle:

You can start WINNT.EXE to start the Windows installation, but then on the reboots (e.g. after install files get copied to target drive), the flash drive will boot to DOS again, interrupting the installation.

To solve the above problem, it seems you would have to partition the target drive into two partitions, placing the I386 and $OEM$ installation folders on the "installation partition", from where you would start WINNT.EXE. Then the flash drive would have to be removed from the USB port to allow reboots that do not interrupt Windows install.

Perhaps a batch file could be created to accomplish those tasks, but it seems having to hang by to remove the Flash Drive defeats the purpose of having things done unattended... Not to mention the long process of partitioning, formatting, and transfering all files over.

Of course, I may be thinking in the wrong direction. Maybe someone has some simple, but fresh new ideas...!

(Unless some utility comes out, so that we can make USB Flash Drives emulate the behaviour of a CD ROM Drive...!)

[p4ntb0y]

Well not all drive are drives are made the same.

and you mentioned a 2gb pen drive, the largest you can boot from is 1gb (Well supported)

I have a number of HP Machines which I have used a 512MB pen drive to boot of using the HP Format Utility and have completed an install from my pen.

I will see if I can dig out the doc's in work for you.

[Bezalel]

What about booting to a PE enviroment (Bart or Win) and starting winnt32 with the syspart switch. After the process finishes you could just remove the usb drive and restart the PC.

[willpantin]

p4ntb0y said

and you mentioned a 2gb pen drive, the largest you can boot from is 1gb (Well supported)

Well, at least on my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB Flash Drive the HP Format Utility seemed to work fine. I was able to boot from it and install what on my computer amounted to about 1.5 GB worth of files on it (I guess on the Flash Drive, with the FAT system, they added up to almost 2 GB).

I was then able to install Windows by running WINNT.EXE from the DOS prompt. It was noticeably slower when formatted with the HP utility because it formatted in FAT16, but it worked. Not unattended, though...!

I also tried formatting in NTFS, which booted incredibly fast, and allowed placing a full 1.96 GB worth of files on the Flash Drive, but had dissapointing results as well with trying to install unattended. I saved the instructions for an NTFS bootable Flash drive if anyone would like it posted here, but unfortunately I wouldn't know who to credit for the original posting...

@Bezalel,

Sounds interesting, might just look into that...!

[Lau]

@ willpantin

I saved the instructions for an NTFS bootable Flash drive if anyone would like it posted here, but unfortunately I wouldn't know who to credit for the original posting....

Just post it, might help some people....

Lau

[willpantin]

To make a bootable Flash Drive in the NTFS format, follow the instructions I am quoting from some forgotten source (I used cut and paste, and saved in TXT file for my later use). Use at your own risk!

First, double click on the usb removal icon, click on display device components,

then click on storage device and click on properties, then go to policies, and

then select optimize for performance, then click ok, and close.

Now make sure you look and see what drive letter your usb drive is using.

Now go to the run command and type in cmd for the command prompt.

Now type this is, of course substituting your USB drive letter for the part

where it says "drive letter here".

format (drive letter here): /FS:NTFS /X

Once this has been completed, open up My Computer, and go up to and click, tools,

options, view, and click on Show hidden files and folders, and uncheck Hide

protected operating system files(recommended), click yes to the dialog box

warning you about this, and then click apply and then ok.

Ok, now click on your C Drive and browse down the the files:

NTDETECT.COM

ntldr

boot.ini

and COPY them to the base folder of your flash drive. Now you're done.

If this doesn't work, right click on the My Computer icon and then select Manage.

Now go down to the Disk Management title on the left side of the window and click

on it. This will load the logical disk manager and allow you to check to see if

your USB drive has the partition set to active. If it doesn't, right click on the

lower window where it gives the information to your USB drive, and select

Mark Partition as active.

Note: I had to look for a different way to make the partition active, as that option, as described, was greyed out.

This helps explain why the option was greyed out, though it was answering a different problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315261

But, note you can also boot from a BartPE CD and set it as active from there. Whatever system you use, make sure the Flash Drive is in the USB port while booting, so it is recognized...!

[RogueSpear]

You may want to take a look at PeToUSB. Contrary to what the name may indicate, you can simply format your USB drive with this. You don't have to copy over WinPE or BartPE. The format process with this is slightly different than with the HP utility.

[p4ntb0y]

i see this question has been asked before and again some good links are in the posts.....

PE2USB is way faster boot prepare disk, copy files over kick off winnt32 done.

How to boot/install from USB key

[xenz]

You can start WINNT.EXE to start the Windows installation, but then on the reboots (e.g. after install files get copied to target drive), the flash drive will boot to DOS again, interrupting the installation.

If your PEN drive was formatted using Win98 io.sys then visit here for JO.sys

http://www.nu2.nu/jo/, it may solve your problem.

Win98's IO.sys will load up JO.sys if exist in the root directory, which in turn will show up "Press any key to boot CD (ESC to boot HD)..." message. This is a undocumented feature within Win98's IO.SYS

In your case, after WinNT text install and reboot, it boot your flashdrive, loaded JO.sys, waited and start HD again to continue Windows installation.

It only works with Win98's IO.SYS, it doesn't work with WinME and WinXP (essentially which is WinME) IO.SYS.

Hope this helps.

Dan

Edited March 21, 2006 by xenz

[jaclaz]

Let's see if I can give you some hints:

If you have a FAT16 boot volume (standard IDE) you can double boot Windows NT/2K/XP/2003 and DOS/Windows 98, (if it is FAT32 DOS is not possible)

You can make the same with a FAT16 boot volume on a USB stick/drive.

But you can also boot multiple NT/2K/XP/2003 as long as their system directory is different, and even if they reside on DIFFERENT DRIVES.

So you can read my tutorial here:

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...B/USBstick.html

Or just search my posts about using BOOTPART :

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

To make the needed bootsectors

and those related to BOOT.INI syntax.

Read this also:

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm

And the thread P4ntboy suggested:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST&f=34&t=61384

You should be able to get what you want....

The only problem you will have will be with drive lettering.....

jaclaz