Who uses WinXP's unattended installation utility?

[Severian]

I'm just curious. I've been using the winnt.sif file for years now, but I'm wondering how many others do this as well. For me it's been an enormous time saver.

I've never been able to get it to work with RAID, though, and as near as I can tell neither has anyone else. I'd be interested in anyone else's experience.

Thanks

 

[Severian]

bump.....

I'm sure I'm not the only one doing this....right??

 

[nweaver]

I have used it a lot. Makes things much easier.

As far as using it with raid, you have to setup the raid prior to installing windows (and slipstream the raid drivers into the install). I have done this before too. Dell has a deployment toolkit that lets you script things, and it's been integrated into the Altris Deployment tools, and I have used it to take a server, configure BIOS, RAID, etc, install windows, SQL, IIS, patch windows, update F/W on the server, etc. All as one big task that is easy to do.

 

[RedCOMET]

I made an unattended cd. It took some time and testing to get it right. . It will certianly help me the next time i reinstall XP.

 

[Severian]

nweaver, that's interesting about the raid...I've slipstreamed drivers into my install CD's without problems, but for some reason I've never been able to get the RAID drivers (of whatever flavor) to work in an unattended setting. Even tinkering with the txtsetup.oem files and removing references to other WinXX version drivers still results in no joy.

is the utility you use for scripting the deployment available for download anywhere? I'd be interested in trying it out.

Generally speaking, I limit my default winnt.sif file to default settings only, changing only the cd-key and computer name for each install, since drivers are updated so often that each slipstreamed customized disc is out of date so soon.