Attended TextMode | Unattended GUI

[patwa]

Hello there.

I'd be really grateful if someone could help me with this. I have looked through the PDF version of the guides on this site, and I'm sure it's mentioned in there somewhere, but as I'm partially sighted navigating the net is sometimes a pain. Therefore, I apologise if this has been covered elsewhere.

I want to create a generic XP SP2 Unattended CD that I can use on any machine for a basic OS install and application installation (Office 2003, Firewall, etc). However, as some of the machines require specific driver disks to be inserted during the TextMode portion of setup (SATA/RAID install) or as I may want to install to different partitions, I'd like to be able to manually work through the TextMode part of the setup, and have the GUI part and app install done unattended.

Could someone please advise me as to the lines in the winnt.sif file that would control and allow this?

Thanks a lot once again.

Hussein.

[Delprat]

Could someone please advise me as to the lines in the winnt.sif file that would control and allow this?

Use UnattendedMode=DefaultHide and Autopartition=0 will activate "text-mode partitionning" and "F6 mass storage drivers".

But you'll need to fill in ALL the lines relevant to GUI-mode to make it unattended.

Here is an example, made with nLite :

[Data]
Autopartition = 0
MsDosInitiated = 0
UnattendedInstall = Yes

[Unattended]
UnattendMode = DefaultHide
UnattendSwitch = Yes
OemPreinstall = Yes
OemSkipEula = Yes
FileSystem = *
WaitForReboot = No
NoWaitAfterTextMode = 1
NoWaitAfterGUIMode = 1
DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
NonDriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
Hibernation = No

[Display]
Xresolution = 1280
Yresolution = 1024
BitsPerPel = 32
Vrefresh = 75

[SystemRestore]
DisableSR = 1
CreateFirstRunRp = 0

[GuiUnattended]
AutoLogon = Yes
EncryptedAdminPassword = No
AdminPassword = *
TimeZone = 105
OEMSkipRegional = 1
OemSkipWelcome = 1

[Components]
Indexsrv_system = Off

[UserData]
ProductKey = "xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx"
ComputerName = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
FullName = "xxxxxxxxx"
OrgName = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

[RegionalSettings]
LanguageGroup = 1
Language = 040c

[Networking]
InstallDefaultComponents = Yes

[Identification]
JoinWorkgroup = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[patwa]

Thanks very much for that. This means that instead of creating a seperate disc for every computer I can just pull together all the elements that are common to all computer systems and have them installed, and then I just have to manually install just a few items.

Thanks a lot!

Hussein.

[Delprat]

If the computer-specific items are hardware related you can use WMI to determine what to install (in a batch, in a script, ...)

There's a thread somewhere about unattended install of VMWare tools.