Question About a Quirk of Unattended Installs

[mr.roboto.ny]

I've been making my own unattended discs for a couple of years, but
have one almost minor frustration. Occasionally, the installation
goes just fine until it reaches the initial boot of Windows. One out
of ten installs fails to offer the dialog to create an initial user
and displays the Administrator ID on the login screen. This ALWAYS
seems to happen when I do an unattended install from the hard drive
instead of the CD/DVD. The cmd-line I use for an unattended install
from the hard drive follows:

C:\I386\WINNT32 /S:C:\I386 /UNATTEND:C:\I386\WINNT.SIF

The reason this is a big deal is that the installed apps have to be
adjusted/duplicated AFTER creating the initial user, partitially
defeating the purpose of an unattended install.

Are there ANY options for the cmd-line that consistently force the
creation of the initial user or pos there's an option for the
unattended answer file itself ?

Thanx in advance....Jet

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I've been making my own unattended discs for a couple of years, but
have one almost minor frustration. Occasionally, the installation
goes just fine until it reaches the initial boot of Windows. One
out of ten installs fails to offer the dialog to create an initial
user and displays the Administrator ID on the login screen. This
ALWAYS seems to happen when I do an unattended install from the
hard drive instead of the CD/DVD. The cmd-line I use for an
unattended install from the hard drive follows:

C:\I386\WINNT32 /S:C:\I386 /UNATTEND:C:\I386\WINNT.SIF

The reason this is a big deal is that the installed apps have to be
adjusted/duplicated AFTER creating the initial user, partitially
defeating the purpose of an unattended install.

Are there ANY options for the cmd-line that consistently force the
creation of the initial user or pos there's an option for the
unattended answer file itself ?

Ever read through the forums here:
http://unattended.msfn.org/

Or gone here:
http://unatended.sourceforge.net/

I create and set the automatic logon as my new user early on. When it is
done installing all my apps with that user and applying all my reg tweaks -
I can pretty much make a default user profile and I am done.

 

[mr.roboto.ny]

Shenan: Thanx for the speedy feedback. Actually, I *learned* all I
know about unattended installs from MSFN. I posted a similar query a
while back on the MSFN forum, but got no nibbles. The new PDF guide
is well-done, but re-reading it won't hurt. I haven't looked at the
SourceForge site you mention, but will do so this weekend.

The only tool I've ever used is the SETUPMGR, which doesn't seem to
have any options to control default/initial user creation (actually, I
just ran it again using my default WINNT.SIF, for a fully-automated XP
Pro install from a CD.)

Is there something else (other tools) one mite be using ? Later....Jet