Unattended installations - is it possible to reformat as well?

[Guest]

Hi,

I'm wondering if it's possible to, while performing an unattended
installation over the network of Windows XP Pro, to reformat the target
machine at the same time?

I need to reformat and reinstall around 60 machines that do not have CD-ROM
or floppy drives (they were deliberately removed to prevent abuse). I see the
easiest way of doing this as being through a network unattended installation,
but there appears to be no option to reformat the target machine as well.

Thanks in advance for anything that may help.

--K

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I'm wondering if it's possible to, while performing an unattended
installation over the network of Windows XP Pro, to reformat the
target machine at the same time?

I need to reformat and reinstall around 60 machines that do not
have CD-ROM or floppy drives (they were deliberately removed to
prevent abuse). I see the easiest way of doing this as being
through a network unattended installation, but there appears to be
no option to reformat the target machine as well.

Thanks in advance for anything that may help.

If they are PXE boot capable and setup (and you have the server side setup
and pointing correctly to your servers) you can completely wipe/reinstall
these machines.

Otherwise - you'd have to find some way of creating a real/virtual second
partition to reboot and start the install from.