[ITinerant]

After booting to the CD I get all the regular options of deleting the partition, creating a partition, and which partition to format and install to... however, the one option I no longer have with the Unattended Installation CD is the option to Repair the current installation, thus keeping all settings intact. This is necessary when upgrading hardware, for example, the Motherboard and CPU. I know a clean install is the prefered method, however, I recently upgraded a clients box from a Pentium 3 to an AMD Athlon XP1800+
I just swapped the MB and CPU and used all the old components, including SDRAM.
Tried to boot up and ... bummer! At least it did POST, but then blank.
I really hated to lose all her settings; dial-up, MSN, yada yada...

Unfortunately, the Unattended Installation CD I made skips over this option...


Does anyone know if it's possible not to skip this option when making an Unattended WinXP Installation CD?

[Alanoll]

use a normal disc. You obviously have one.

An unattended disc loses the ability for Repair. It's the winnt.sif file. You may be able to change the type fro FullUnattend to DefaultHide but I'm not sure.....


also, the prefered method is Unattended disc with slipstreams hotfixes WITHOUT using AutoPatcher (atleast me, and anyone who uses XPCREATE, or wants to learn how to do it themselves without relying on others)

[ITinerant]

Alanoll, on Jun 14 2004, 03:03 PM, said:

use a normal disc. You obviously have one.

An unattended disc loses the ability for Repair. It's the winnt.sif file. You may be able to change the type fro FullUnattend to DefaultHide but I'm not sure.....

Thanks. I'll keep an eye on this thread just in case somone knows for sure.

[wolfshade]

As far as i'm aware XP doesn't support changing MB on same install ... it didn't work for me but i remember 98se would've accept it (hmmm ... the old good days )

I see in u're picture that u have an "Repair=R" option it lower area u saying that doesn't work? ...never tried it so far on my unattend ...and can't try it yet cuz i didn't put my unattend on CD yet

This post has been edited by wolfshade: 14 June 2004 - 05:17 PM

[ITinerant]

wolfshade, on Jun 14 2004, 05:13 PM, said:

As far as i'm aware XP doesn't support changing MB on same install ... it didn't work for me but i remember 98se would've accept it (hmmm ... the old good days )

I see in u're picture that u have an "Repair=R" option it lower area u saying that doesn't work? ...never tried it so far on my unattend ...and can't try it yet cuz i didn't put my unattend on CD yet

That's why you need the Repair option so you can reinstall the Windows directory from the boot disc, which allows a new hardware setup without losing all the other directories and settings.

The picture I posted was from another source. In fact it's from someone's site explaining how...
Windows Installation CD - Repair Current Installation Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

I did the Repair successfully using a "normal disc", but I'm trying to find out how to make an Unattended Installation disc having the same Repair ability that they somehow lose.

[Alanoll]

one workaround till you a better solution is found.....
do a mock multiboot....
one with the winnt.sif file, one without on the same disk.......

[ITinerant]

Alanoll, on Jun 14 2004, 05:59 PM, said:

one workaround till you a better solution is found.....
do a mock multiboot....
one with the winnt.sif file, one without on the same disk.......

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not really looking for a temporary solution as I am trying to find the reason the Unattended WinXP Installation CD loses that Repair option and what must be done so that it doesn't. I am looking to upgrade quite a few machines and I really don't want to have to babysit each new Repair installation if I can help it.

[ITinerant]

I'm thinking there might be some entry to the winnt.sif that will include the Repair option.
For example; the Autopartition="0" leaves the Partition screen in the Windows Setup need to be answered.
I'm hoping there is something such as RepairOption="Yes" that will leave that screen to be answered as well?
I'm still hopeful someone will know. It's been my experience that nothing is impossible, just undiscovered.

I'm still unclear about what OemPreinstall=YES does...

;SetupMgrTag 
[Data]
    AutoPartition="0"
    MsDosInitiated="0"
    UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
    UnattendMode=FullUnattended
    OemSkipEula=Yes
    OemPreinstall=YES
    Repartition=No
    UnattendSwitch="Yes"
    WaitForReboot="No"

    TargetPath=\WINDOWS

[Alanoll]

OEMPreInstall=YES tells setup to copy over the contents of the $OEM$ folder. If it's not inlcuded, then they don't get copied.

[ITinerant]

Alanoll, on Jun 15 2004, 08:38 AM, said:

OEMPreInstall=YES tells setup to copy over the contents of the $OEM$ folder. If it's not inlcuded, then they don't get copied.

Thanks Alanoll,
Now I remember. I tried changing that once with those results.

[Vadikan]

ITinerant, on Jun 14 2004, 06:26 PM, said:

I am looking to upgrade quite a few machines and I really don't want to have to babysit each new Repair installation if I can help it. 

You can install the Recovery Console locally (winnt32.exe /cmdcons). You can install it from a batch file during unattended insatll winnt32.exe /cmdcons /unattend /dudisable. After the setup is complete, you get a choice of whether to boot into OS or Rec. Console

[ITinerant]

VAD, on Jun 15 2004, 05:17 PM, said:

You can install the Recovery Console locally (winnt32.exe /cmdcons). You can install it from a batch file during unattended insatll winnt32.exe  /cmdcons /unattend /dudisable. After the setup is complete, you get a choice of whether to boot into OS or Rec. Console

Thanks VAD, I've never played with the Recovery Console before. Might be a good time to find out what it's all about.

[[BM]Crusher]

recovery console won't let you do a 'Repair' installation... it will let you do other things like FIXBOOT, CHKDSK etc etc...

you can never have 'Repair' on an unattended installation... do what Alanoll said and make a MULTI-BOOT disc that has a normal not touched windows xp, plus your unattended installation (use the MSFN multi-boot dvd guide to work out how to make a cd that has both installations and still only uses the same amount of space)

anyway... I am a computer technician (head technician)... I can't say that your problem is common, we upgrade peoples computers all the time and Windows will still boot (98, ME, 2K, XP all the same)... you just boot it into windows and install the correct drivers... i've done all types of upgrades including going from a P166 up to a P4-3.2 without needing to reinstall windows...

if your machine isn't even trying to boot the hard drive (if it freezes at a black screen after BIOS and doesn't give you an error or show you the windows boot menu) something else is wrong

[ITinerant]

[BM said:

Crusher,Jun 15 2004, 06:43 PM] recovery console won't let you do a 'Repair' installation... it will let you do other things like FIXBOOT, CHKDSK etc etc...

you can never have 'Repair' on an unattended installation... do what Alanoll said and make a MULTI-BOOT disc that has a normal not touched windows xp, plus your unattended installation (use the MSFN multi-boot dvd guide to work out how to make a cd that has both installations and still only uses the same amount of space)

anyway... I am a computer technician (head technician)... I can't say that your problem is common, we upgrade peoples computers all the time and Windows will still boot (98, ME, 2K, XP all the same)... you just boot it into windows and install the correct drivers... i've done all types of upgrades including going from a P166 up to a P4-3.2 without needing to reinstall windows...

if your machine isn't even trying to boot the hard drive (if it freezes at a black screen after BIOS and doesn't give you an error or show you the windows boot menu) something else is wrong

Thanks for the advice Crusher,
I actually did the Repair booting to a "Normal" disc after the machine failed to boot to the HDD (see begining of this thread). Perhaps the problem was going from an Intel chipset to an AMD? I dunno I just know the Repair worked.

I've pretty much given up on this quest.

[[BM]Crusher]

it's strange... probably a FIXBOOT would have done the trick... it should have at least attempted to boot the operating system... we've gone from amd to intel and visa versa and windows will always at least attempt to boot (good enough to be able to go into safe mode and uninstall the old drivers)...

[Vadikan]

{BM}Crusher, on Jun 15 2004, 06:43 PM, said:

recovery console won't let you do a 'Repair' installation... it will let you do other things like FIXBOOT, CHKDSK etc etc...

you can never have 'Repair' on an unattended installation... do what Alanoll said and make a MULTI-BOOT disc that has a normal not touched windows xp, plus your unattended installation (use the MSFN multi-boot dvd guide to work out how to make a cd that has both installations and still only uses the same amount of space)

Yes, you're right. Sorry, I looked at the screenshot on the first page and confused it with the R (Recovery Console option). It still not a bad idea to have Recovery Console installed locally for your friends or family members ;-)

The multi-boot is the only solution in this case. Did you mean the guide by flyakite? I missed it in the first place. It seems pretty solid; however, for the Repair option only I'd go with Bootable CD Wizard (the web site is really slow, but interesting). Actually, the utility is pretty powerful to handle complicated multiboot installations, and it was probably mentioned somewhere in the Multi-Boot forum. That method was suggested by a member of a Russian board, and it didn't take me long to create dual boot DVD (unattended + regular). 20 minutes I spent on reading the documentation and 10 minutes on creating the disc. Well, I played with the shell settings for another hour then ;-))

The idea is to hexedit SETUPLDR.BIN replacing winnt.sif with, say, winn1.sif. Then, the file is saved as SETUPLD1.BIN in i386, and the winnt.sif is renamed to winn1.sif. That's basically it. Bootable CD Wizard uses bootcat.ini as the config file, where the following text defines the available installations:

\i386\setupld1.bin;Windows XP Professional Unattended
\i386\setupldr.bin;Windows XP Professional Regular  

Pretty easy.

[edbro]

Oops, wrong posting. My bad, please disregard and forgive the bufoonery.