DiegoStart: Unatended Windows Installs from a windows share

[dijuremo]

Hi all,

After being given permission from one of the forum Moderators, I would like to announce to all of you DiegoStart. It is basically a methodology to perform unattended windows installations after mounting a windows share. Everything is installed from the network share including the OS. You can find out a lot more at the web site:

http://diegostart.dijuremo.org

I currently do not have forums configured in my website so I may ask the moderators if they are willing to open a DiegoStart forum section at MSFN if there are enough people who may want to discuss DiegoStart.

I hope all of you like it and find it useful

dijuremo.

[Felipe]

Very well documented. It should help a lot of guys out !

Oh and welcome to the forums.

[VCC]

Yes, Welcome to the forums.

This is cool, I've been wanting a BartPE solution for setting up Windows from a dist point. It's great to see someone has done it. I'll give a try.

[mmarable]

I've been going over the docs over the weekend and I have to say it's a very professional job you've done here.

I took the plunge and started setting this all up today and ran into an error with "Slipstream.bat". The very last line generates an error.

echo Slipstreaming Update (KB912945) Security Update && start /wait WindowsXP-KB912945-x86-ENU.exe /quiet /integrate:%WINXPCD%

The problem is that you have KB912945 listed as an Optional update and not a Critical one. So, the script cannot find the needed file.

But, so far so good. I'm really likeing this system you have. Excellent work.

[dijuremo]

The problem is that you have KB912945 listed as an Optional update and not a Critical one. So, the script cannot find the needed file.

But, so far so good. I'm really likeing this system you have. Excellent work.

Thanks for reporting the issue, I have commented out this update in slipstream.bat. I also made some other minor changes that can be found in the changelog of the DiegoStart website at: http://diegostart.dijuremo.org/index.php?title=Changelog

A new release has been made 2.0.2 that includes the fixes: http://diegostart.dijuremo.org/images/latest.zip

I am glad you guys find the site useful. All your comments, suggestions and requests are very welcome.

dijuremo

[mmarable]

dijuremo,

I have to tell you, I really am liking this. You've done an excellent job putting this together. It's very well thought out and organized. Again, nice job.

I am having one problem though. I boot up the BartPE disk but the menu items under "Setup hard drive partitons" are all greyed out. The same thing is happening to the menu items under the OS choices. It's as if the last level of menu is greyed out. For example, the menu items under "Windows 2000" are greyed out, but the menus immediatly under Windows XP are fine (Home, Professional, etc.) but the menus under that (Home/Laptop, OS with updates) are greyed out.

The batch files are there and I run them directly without problem.

It's probably a BartPE thing, so I suppose I should just play with it.

Could it be the If statement in the XML file for the menus? I'm not real familiar with creating plugins for BartPE so you'll have to bear with me. The items that are greyed out have an IF statement associated with them. Could it be that the menu is built before the connection to the share has been made, so the items are greyed out?

I'll play with it and see what I can find out.

Thanks

Mike

[dijuremo]

I am having one problem though. I boot up the BartPE disk but the menu items under "Setup hard drive partitons" are all greyed out. The same thing is happening to the menu items under the OS choices. It's as if the last level of menu is greyed out. For example, the menu items under "Windows 2000" are greyed out, but the menus immediatly under Windows XP are fine (Home, Professional, etc.) but the menus under that (Home/Laptop, OS with updates) are greyed out.

This is by design. Since most batch scripts reside in the file server (except the one used to mount the share), then at the beginning you do not have the other menus available because the Z: drive is not mounted yet and menus appear greyed out. When you go through step 1 which mounts the files, at the end you should see a message saying that the drive was succesfully mounted or that it failed. You will also be asked to reload the Nu2menu from: Go->System->Nu2menu->Reload Menu. The wait time for you to read this is 15 seconds. Do you think it is too short? Did you actually try mounting the file server files?

You can confirm this by looking at the mount script in D:\DiegoStart\Pebuilder\plugins\DiegoStart\files\mount.bat which looks like:

echo off
color 0E
net use Z: \\%DSSIP%\winsetup /user:installer
if EXIST "Z:\scripts\hddsetup". (
	echo "Diegostart server is now mounted on Z: from %DSSIP%"
	) ELSE (
	echo "Something is wrong Z: was not mounted"
)
echo You must now reload the Nu2menu to enable all Diegostart features.
echo "Click on:  Go-->System-->Nu2menu-->Reload menu"
echo This window will close in 15 seconds && sleep.exe 15

After reloading the Nu2menu all menus will be enabled as long as the network share was mounted correctly as the Z: drive.

dijuremo

Edited March 24, 2006 by dijuremo

[mmarable]

dijuremo,

I'm sorry, you're exactly right. I really should pay more attention to what's going on I suppose. I just saw that the connection worked and didn't even pay attention to the rest. Once I reloaded the menu, everything worked perfectly.

Thanks

Mike