A
Amadej Bukorovic
Hello everyone,
I have a quick question about unattended installs to begin with. I
have a classroom of 17 computers for which I am trying to create an
unattended install CD. I've created the answer file with setup
manager, renamed it to winnt.sif, copied the content of a Windows XP
install CD to the hard drive, moved the winnt.sif file into \i386
directory and downloaded the Windows XP boot image I found on the
internet. After that I created a bootable CD and tried it out but it
seems it is ignoring my answer files (I presume this because it stops
at the hard drive partitioning, where I have to repartition it
manually to continue).
Am I missing something, how can I get an unattended install to work
directly off a CD without the need of the silly boot floppy with
answer files?
My second question will require some patience: As I have mentioned I
have a classroom of 17 identical Dell workstations. I am looking for
the best way to automate Windows XP installs on those workstations. I
have looked at RIS, which I would prefer the most, but the problem is
I don't use a DHCP server because I need to distinguish the
workstations on the Linux firewall (the teacher's computer has more
ports open to the internet than the rest, not to mention the
workstations in the administrative office and the public one in the
other classroom etc). So RIS sadly falls out.
Ghosting would be a nice option but that would require me to buy extra
software, for which we currently have no funds for. So I am left with
sysprep and unattended installs.
The problem is I have to be able to manually assign the IP and
computer name to each computer. The rest I hope can all be automatic.
Sysprep looks to me like a nice option, with two exceptions. I could
burn the sysprep image on the CD and use it off the CD, but as far as
I remember the mini-setup menu, I require to type in a user which will
use the computer, making him an administrator on the machine besides
the standard Administrator account. Which means I will require to
enter something silly at setup and delete the account afterwards.
Which leaves me with an unattended installation, which I can't get to
work off a bootable CD directly and using an answer floppy disk really
isn't my idea of fast. Also, from what I've read and saw, sysprep
seems to be the faster way of installing? Or am I wrong.
Any comments & suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Amadej.
I have a quick question about unattended installs to begin with. I
have a classroom of 17 computers for which I am trying to create an
unattended install CD. I've created the answer file with setup
manager, renamed it to winnt.sif, copied the content of a Windows XP
install CD to the hard drive, moved the winnt.sif file into \i386
directory and downloaded the Windows XP boot image I found on the
internet. After that I created a bootable CD and tried it out but it
seems it is ignoring my answer files (I presume this because it stops
at the hard drive partitioning, where I have to repartition it
manually to continue).
Am I missing something, how can I get an unattended install to work
directly off a CD without the need of the silly boot floppy with
answer files?
My second question will require some patience: As I have mentioned I
have a classroom of 17 identical Dell workstations. I am looking for
the best way to automate Windows XP installs on those workstations. I
have looked at RIS, which I would prefer the most, but the problem is
I don't use a DHCP server because I need to distinguish the
workstations on the Linux firewall (the teacher's computer has more
ports open to the internet than the rest, not to mention the
workstations in the administrative office and the public one in the
other classroom etc). So RIS sadly falls out.
Ghosting would be a nice option but that would require me to buy extra
software, for which we currently have no funds for. So I am left with
sysprep and unattended installs.
The problem is I have to be able to manually assign the IP and
computer name to each computer. The rest I hope can all be automatic.
Sysprep looks to me like a nice option, with two exceptions. I could
burn the sysprep image on the CD and use it off the CD, but as far as
I remember the mini-setup menu, I require to type in a user which will
use the computer, making him an administrator on the machine besides
the standard Administrator account. Which means I will require to
enter something silly at setup and delete the account afterwards.
Which leaves me with an unattended installation, which I can't get to
work off a bootable CD directly and using an answer floppy disk really
isn't my idea of fast. Also, from what I've read and saw, sysprep
seems to be the faster way of installing? Or am I wrong.
Any comments & suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Amadej.