Don Scroggins

Travis Tirey                                                                                                  

Aaron Wasson

Local Unattended Install of Windows XP Professional

The goal of an unattended install is to allow a system or network administrator to go about his/her other duties while setting up an operating system on one or more systems. There are, of course, many more efficient ways to perform unattended installs if you are working with a large number of systems; RIS (Remote installation service) being the most commonly used for this purpose.

Today we are going to explain how to do a local unattended install using your Windows XP Pro CD and a floppy with an answer file.

Items needed for this project:

Windows XP Pro CD

Blank floppy diskette

A computer that is already running Windows XP Professional

Time: +/- 1 hour

It should be noted that the system you are going to do the unattended install on must support booting from CD-ROM. The system must also adhere to the El-Torinto non-emulation specification.  For more information about this standard please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167685/EN-US/.

Also note that with this type of installation method you are limited to a single partition and you cannot load third-party drivers during setup.

You are going to need to generate an unattended answer file and save it to a floppy diskette. The file needs to be named winnt.sif. This file will also need to be edited further before it is run for complete unattended install to function properly.

Step 1.   You need to use setup manager to create your unattended answer file. This

tool can be found in the DEPLOY.CAB file on your Windows XP Pro CD in the Supporttools folder.

Double click on DEPLOY.CAB to open it. Then from the edit menu click “select all”. Select “copy to folder” and choose the destination folder where you would like the files extracted. Click copy.

Open the folder you extracted the files to and locate the setupmgr.exe program.

Step 2  Double click on setupmgr.exe  You should then be  presented with a window

asking if you want to create a new answer file or modify an existing file. Choose

“create new”.

The next screen ask for type of install. Select “unattended setup”

Next is the Product screen. Select “Windows XP Professional”

User interaction should be set to “fully automated” on the next screen.

Distribution Share should be set to “Setup from CD”

After clicking “next” you will be presented with a screen with various values

you can enter. Go through the list answering each item ask for.

Of particular note is you MUST input values for the display settings. Otherwise

setup will stop before completion. We also recommend encrypting of the Administrator password. Once you click next you will be prompted for a location and file name of where to save the answer file. You should save it to a:winnt.sif.

Step 3   Editing the winnt.sif file

To have the install be completely unattended you need it to also perform  partitioning and formatting on the fly. This requires some editing of the winnt.sif file that you saved to a:. Open this file in you favorite editor and check for the following items. If they are not there then add them.

Under  [Data]  be sure the following lines exist:

UnattendedInstall=Yes

MSDosInitiated=No

AutoPartition=1

Under [Unattended] add the following line:

repartition=Yes

NOTE: this line must be in place or partitioning and formatting will not occur, and unattended setup will not complete. After these changes are made save the file.

Step 4   Installation

Make sure you boot order in your bios is set to boot from CD. Check documentation for you computer for instructions on how to do this.

Insert your Windows XP Pro CD and floppy diskette into their respective drives

and reboot the system.

The system should boot from the CD and read the answer file from the floppy diskette. Partitioning and formatting should take place without any interaction from you, as should the rest of install. 

At the end you will be left at the “Welcome to Windows XP” screen. This is where you will setup internet and user info. If you’ve gotten to this screen then the unattended install has completed successfully.

Sources Used

 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314459/EN-US/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167685/EN-US/

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Customizing-Unattended-Setup.html

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/all/techref/en-us/Default.asp?url=/Resources/Documentation/windowsserv/2003/all/techref/en-us/w2k3tr_r_remoteinstall.asp