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plattze

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Windows XP Unattended Setup Problem

We have Unattended Setup working and it's great.

2 questions in regards to this.

1)  Is it possible to make the XP Setup to format the HDD to an NTFS partition (size = max hdd size)?  At the moment, I have it scripted to use gdisk to delete all partiton, create the partition, reboot, then run setup...I would like XP to just format (saves me rebooting) regardly of whether the HDD has any partition or data on it.

2)  After unattended setup firsts runs (below is how I am calling it) - it copies the files (expecting a 2Gb FAT32 parition which my gdisk script gives it), then reboots, asks F6 for additional drivers and starts the actual install.

This is where the major problem arises.  On a system which doesn't have normal IDE Hard drives (ie.  SATA, SCSI, RAID etc), I hit F6.  Then say "S" for specify additional drivers, put the floppy disk in for that specific hardware.  It finds it, I hit okay and it continues.

But then, next, when it starts to copy the files, it first tries to copy the driver files which I just specified, and it fails.  Saying:

"Setup cannot copy the file:  xxx.sys
* To Retry:  Press ENTER
* To Skip: Press ESC
* To Quit:  Press F3"

If I skip it, the same thing happens as if I didn't specify the driver,  Setup will not be able to talk to the hard drive controller and will Blue Screen.  If I keep retrying, the message just loops.

This seems to be a bug for Windows XP in unattended mode, If I just grab the CD, boot of it, F6, it all works fine.

However, I CANNOT just do a 'normal' XP install, it _needs_ to be unattended from the network (from a network bootdisk) for numerous reasons which I cannot mention.

Can anyone help me?

If anyone can point me to a program or script (NOT A GUIDE) which will automatically slipstream the drivers into the unattended network install point I will also accept that as an answer.

Thanks.
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venishjoe
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