unattended setup

[Rostislav V. Nedosekin]

Hello!
I'm trying to do unattend setup of winXPsp1 Professional from network share
from the DOS.
The hard disk was previously formatted and the answer file was copied into
c:\temp folder.
The source location is:
\\server\testlab\winXP\i386
the command is:
winnt.exe /s:\\server\testlab\winXP\i386 /u:c:\temp\unattend.txt
The command is recognized and the setup procces beginning, but it hangs on
the screen:
"Wait while copying files on your hard drive."
Then I tried to reboot with system disk. And run the scandisk c: - it found
the error: missing chains. I checked - there was no any errors before I run
setup.
What can happen?

 

[Rostislav V. Nedosekin]

It sounds like... but the smartdrv is running..
The hard disk activity indicator always on, and I think thet scandisk errors
occures because I
switched of the computer manualy not waiting for operation completes.
I tried to run installation for a night and it completed only in
morning....
What mode must smartdrv run? I run it with /v key, and it said that only
read cache is enabled. Is it nessesary to swith on write cache?

 

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

I run smartdrv with no flags.

I suspect that your hardware is flaky. Remember that since winnt.exe
runs from DOS, it uses the BIOS to read and write the disk. And the
BIOS is probably not very sophisticated about handling disk errors.
When it gets an error reading or writing a block, it most likely just
retries the operation silently.

This would explain the extremely slow disk operations, the hard drive
light being stuck on, and the scandisk failures. I suggest running a
full diagnostic on your drive. (Your system vendor should be able to
supply you with a diagnostic tool.)

- Pat