Unattended Setup with customizing without floppy

[Sebastian Wiegand]

Hello,

does anybody know how to perform an unattended installation of w2k without
having a floppy but using the unattended.txt or sif ?

Thank you in advance

yours Sebastian

 

[Johan Arwidmark]

You can use unattend with winnt and winn32

Create a batch-file

***********************

Set Answerfile = .\myanswerfile.txt
Set SetupFiles = F:\i386

winnt32.exe /s:%setupfiles% /unattend:%answerfile%

**************************

regards
Johan Arwidmark

Windows User Group - Nordic
http://www.wug-nordic.net

 

[Benn Wolff]

you can use a winnt.sif file from a RIS server
on a CD root or the i386 folder.
Do a search for winnt.sif & making a bootable windows CD.
here is a good place to check out also.
http://www.911cd.net/forums/

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

Two correct answers have already been given.

My method is documented at www.willowhayes.co.uk/windows2000. It involves
creating a new bootable CD with the winnt.sif file placed in i386. While
you're at it, you can slipstream the latest service pack into the build.

Cheers

Oli

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Oli,

Have you tried the bootable CD method but with a 3rd party mass storage
driver loaded at boot time? I've so far been unable to get this to work.

 

[Johan Arwidmark]

Integrating mass-storage device drivers into the unattend is possible
but some drivers can be a bit tricky...

Reference:

HOWTO: Unattended Installation of Third Party Mass Storage Drivers in
Windows NT and Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=288344

Error Message: Illegal or Missing File Types Specified in Section
Files.SCSI.Name
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=275334

Creating an unattended Windows XP CD
http://www.msfn.org/unattended/xp/

Good article on internals of txtsetup.sif
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBN/tip6500/rh6575.htm

Some additional info...
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-53821-p-2.html

regards
Johan Arwidmark

Windows User Group - Nordic
http://www.wug-nordic.net

 

[Sebastian Wiegand]

That was great help

Two correct answers have already been given.

My method is documented at www.willowhayes.co.uk/windows2000. It involves
creating a new bootable CD with the winnt.sif file placed in i386. While
you're at it, you can slipstream the latest service pack into the build.

Cheers

Oli

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Johan,

Thanks for the links, see comments inline.

HOWTO: Unattended Installation of Third Party Mass Storage Drivers in
Windows NT and Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=288344

This does not appear to cover the case of the "bootable CD"? In fact,
official docs on this seem absent from Microsoft's site. The whole
concept of $OEM$ on a CD appears to be "unsupported", in fact there's
still an article on their site saying it can't be done, even though Oli
from this group has contacted them and asked for the article to be
corrected. Here's the article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234536

I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....

My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.

Error Message: Illegal or Missing File Types Specified in Section
Files.SCSI.Name
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=275334

This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?

Creating an unattended Windows XP CD
http://www.msfn.org/unattended/xp/

This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?

Good article on internals of txtsetup.sif
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBN/tip6500/rh6575.htm

Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time

Some additional info...
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-53821-p-2.html

Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

The whole
concept of $OEM$ on a CD appears to be "unsupported", in fact there's
still an article on their site saying it can't be done, even though Oli
from this group has contacted them and asked for the article to be
corrected. Here's the article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234536

Oh, this just gets better and better. I'm past caring. I kicked up a bit
of a fuss and asked for the article to be clarified and/or corrected and
they pulled the article. Now it's back again and it is still wrong!

The clarification that's required is that when building a bootable CD, only
the GUI-mode setup $OEM$ functionality works. You can't use textmode
mass-storage drivers. The cmdlines.txt functionality works, as does the
rest of $oem$ functionality, like logos, etc.

I've seen reports of people using methods similar to the following to get
this working.
http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/realmen/msg00044.html

I've seen several variations, all of varying complexity, but I'm hesitant to
use them because I want other people to be able to read and understand my
deployment methods.

Gerry -- will I be seeing you in Seattle?

Cheers

Oli

I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....

My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.

Error Message: Illegal or Missing File Types Specified in Section
Files.SCSI.Name
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=275334

This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?

Creating an unattended Windows XP CD
http://www.msfn.org/unattended/xp/

This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?

Good article on internals of txtsetup.sif
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBN/tip6500/rh6575.htm

Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time

Some additional info...
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-53821-p-2.html

Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?

 

[Johan Arwidmark]

This might be a bit out of the diskcussion, but I hope you find it
useful....

OEMs normally use Windows PE as the base platform for deployment and
then sysprep the image before sending the computer to the customer.
sysprep has features to include mass-storage device drivers while
sealing the customer computer.

If you have a Enterprise agreemment with Microsoft you also have
access to Windows PE 1.2 Corporate Edition

Windows PE can quite easy be updated with drivers for mass-storage
device drivers.

If you are into automating deployment (and have an enterprise
agreement) i very much recommend you to look into Windows PE.

Windows PE can be booted from a CD, HDD or over the Network (RIS)

regards
Johan Arwidmark

Windows User Group - Nordic
http://www.wug-nordic.net

Hi Johan,

Thanks for the links, see comments inline.

HOWTO: Unattended Installation of Third Party Mass Storage Drivers in
Windows NT and Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=288344

This does not appear to cover the case of the "bootable CD"? In fact,
official docs on this seem absent from Microsoft's site. The whole
concept of $OEM$ on a CD appears to be "unsupported", in fact there's
still an article on their site saying it can't be done, even though Oli
from this group has contacted them and asked for the article to be
corrected. Here's the article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234536

I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....

My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.

Error Message: Illegal or Missing File Types Specified in Section
Files.SCSI.Name
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=275334

This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?

Creating an unattended Windows XP CD
http://www.msfn.org/unattended/xp/

This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?

Good article on internals of txtsetup.sif
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBN/tip6500/rh6575.htm

Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time

Some additional info...
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-53821-p-2.html

Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

I've had a look at Windows PE and like what I see, but have no way of
licensing it, so I can't use it.

Oli

This might be a bit out of the diskcussion, but I hope you find it
useful....

OEMs normally use Windows PE as the base platform for deployment and
then sysprep the image before sending the computer to the customer.
sysprep has features to include mass-storage device drivers while
sealing the customer computer.

If you have a Enterprise agreemment with Microsoft you also have
access to Windows PE 1.2 Corporate Edition

Windows PE can quite easy be updated with drivers for mass-storage
device drivers.

If you are into automating deployment (and have an enterprise
agreement) i very much recommend you to look into Windows PE.

Windows PE can be booted from a CD, HDD or over the Network (RIS)

regards
Johan Arwidmark

Windows User Group - Nordic
http://www.wug-nordic.net

Hi Johan,

Thanks for the links, see comments inline.

HOWTO: Unattended Installation of Third Party Mass Storage Drivers in
Windows NT and Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=288344

This does not appear to cover the case of the "bootable CD"? In fact,
official docs on this seem absent from Microsoft's site. The whole
concept of $OEM$ on a CD appears to be "unsupported", in fact there's
still an article on their site saying it can't be done, even though Oli
from this group has contacted them and asked for the article to be
corrected. Here's the article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234536

I'm starting to think this part of the problem; the unattend install
expects there to be some kind of partition on the target machine (e.g.
FAT16). The CD-ROM is able to do everything in memory; it's able to load
everything up and then create partitions on a totally blank hard drive,
but maybe this falls apart as soon as you want to use mass storage with
$OEM$, who knows....

My understanding from research so far, is that you CAN use $OEM$ with a
bootable CD as long as you place it in the root and not under i386. This
will allow you to use winnt.sif without a floppy and \pnpdrvrs, but (at
this point) it does not seem to like my Dell Perc 3/Di TXTSETUP.OEM even
if you hack the paths in the [disks] section to make sense under the new
directory structure.

Error Message: Illegal or Missing File Types Specified in Section
Files.SCSI.Name
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=275334

This is strange? I wonder if this applies to latest service packs? I'm
pretty sure you CAN have *.DLLs on a mass storage floppy, so why not
under an unattend?

Creating an unattended Windows XP CD
http://www.msfn.org/unattended/xp/

This is nice, but I don't see any mention of text mode mass storage?

Good article on internals of txtsetup.sif
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBN/tip6500/rh6575.htm

Now we're talking! Looks like they forgot about the *.CAT files though?
One of the nice things about hacking txtsetup.sif is that you can use
the CD on ANY computer, even if it doesn't have the same mass storage
driver you're trying to fire up. I'm starting to think this is the way
forward, but it seems absurd to have to go to these lengths just to get
a 22kb file into memory at boot time

Some additional info...
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-53821-p-2.html

Hmm, seems these guys were left battling with trial and error. Please
tell me there are simple step by step guides on Microsoft's "secret" OEM
site?

 

[Johan Arwidmark]

The next version of Windows PE is said to be more flexible regarding
licensing, I hope Microsoft actually lives up to that...

For now it is licensed with Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Software
Assurance Membership (SAM) . The latter was added not too long ago...

regards
Johan Arwidmark

Windows User Group - Nordic
http://www.wug-nordic.net

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Oli,

Oh, this just gets better and better. I'm past caring. I kicked up a bit
of a fuss and asked for the article to be clarified and/or corrected and
they pulled the article. Now it's back again and it is still wrong!
Typical

The clarification that's required is that when building a bootable CD, only
the GUI-mode setup $OEM$ functionality works. You can't use textmode
mass-storage drivers. The cmdlines.txt functionality works, as does the
rest of $oem$ functionality, like logos, etc.

Aha, I wish I'd known that two weeks ago! Oh well at least I know now.

I've seen reports of people using methods similar to the following to get
this working.
http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/realmen/msg00044.html

Right, that looks like a nice compact version of what I'd sent myself
from another site. I think this is the only option worth trying for
bootable CDs.

One thing you may (or may not) be interested in, is BCD (Barts Bootable
CD). I don't like Nero and don't have CDRWin and can't stand bloated up
CD writer apps anyway. I have Plextools which is very lean but can't do
bootable CD. At first BCD looked horrible, but it's actually really easy
once you realise you can just ignore all the "fancy" stuff. As long as
you stick to the suggested dir structure, it's as simple as typing:

bcd -b w2ksrv

(this example creates a Win2k Server bootable ISO file)

bcd -b w2kpro

(this makes Win2k pro)

If you leave out "-b" it will try to control your burner directly!

I've seen several variations, all of varying complexity, but I'm hesitant to
use them because I want other people to be able to read and understand my
deployment methods.
Quite

Gerry -- will I be seeing you in Seattle?

Nothing so glamorous I'm afraid, I'm stuck in the basement for the next
few months doing server building, disaster recovery testing etc.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

I've seen reports of people using methods similar to the following to get

this working.
http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/realmen/msg00044.html

That's fixed it!

It's actually very simple in the end. You don't need to worry about *.INF
and *.CAT files, because text mode setup doesn't care about such things;
just copy the one tiny *.SYS file to i386, comment out any mass storage
stuff you've added to WINNT.SIF and hack the TXTSETUP.SIF file as described
above.

You still have to set up your $OEM$ with PnP versions - this will be used in
GUI portion of setup..

As noted in other threads this method also has the added advantage of being
able to be used on computers that DON'T have the controller in question,
because it uses Win2k detection instead of being forced by TXTSETUP.OEM

On my own build I also commented out a lot of ancient drivers from the
[SCSI] and [SCSI.Load] sections of TXTSETUP.SIF, just to get it loading a
bit quicker.

The only improvement I can think of on the article above would be to create
a new [SourceDisksNames.x86] entry that would allow the 3rd party driver to
reside in a folder other than i386.

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

That is really cool! I didn't realise how simple it was. Either that, or
you've made it sound simple.

As luch would have it, my test server doesn't have a built-in Windows 2000
driver, so it's a perfect candidate for playing with this stuff.

Thanks for the feedback!

Cheers

Oli

I've seen reports of people using methods similar to the following to get
this working.
http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/realmen/msg00044.html

That's fixed it!

It's actually very simple in the end. You don't need to worry about *.INF
and *.CAT files, because text mode setup doesn't care about such things;
just copy the one tiny *.SYS file to i386, comment out any mass storage
stuff you've added to WINNT.SIF and hack the TXTSETUP.SIF file as described
above.

You still have to set up your $OEM$ with PnP versions - this will be used in
GUI portion of setup..

As noted in other threads this method also has the added advantage of being
able to be used on computers that DON'T have the controller in question,
because it uses Win2k detection instead of being forced by TXTSETUP.OEM

On my own build I also commented out a lot of ancient drivers from the
[SCSI] and [SCSI.Load] sections of TXTSETUP.SIF, just to get it loading a
bit quicker.

The only improvement I can think of on the article above would be to create
a new [SourceDisksNames.x86] entry that would allow the 3rd party driver to
reside in a folder other than i386.

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

luch = luck.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

That is really cool! I didn't realise how simple it was. Either that, or
you've made it sound simple.

It's easier than using TXTSETUP.OEM in that you have less files to copy
and you don't need to place entries in unattend.txt (winnt.sif). I may
even use it for network builds in future. The only downside seems to be
that you have to hack TXTSETUP.SIF, but as long as you document what you
did it should be fine.