jduk

jduk does make sense, although I don't like this. His application is at the gray area of nLite's EULA, and I believe there's a better way to achieve this. What jduk wants is to deploy several remote headless machines with nLited OS, and (at the time) he cannot physically access the machines. So he want as little work as possible for his "family members" who helps him. By "as little work as possible" he means to just put the CD, turn on the computer, and then wait until the installation finishes and reboots. Do I explain this right? Yes - I have machines at home, if they need re-installed i don't want to sit at a machine for an 1hr doing this myself or if i am at work or away for a couple of days i want someone else to handle it easily. I don't need nLite anyway, its not adding anything in my use-case, and will just use native WINNT.SIF customization to build an unattended cd for each pc

Basically, I just followed a guide for nLite to get an unattended cd for each pc with necessary drivers etc loaded and there is an option there to enable remote desktop. I also have a custom script to execute on RunOnce to install vnc and some other useful tools aswell. The BIOS is set to boot cd first and to ignore keyboard errors. I then installed grub4dos bootloader as jaclaz mentioned. I built a custom menu.lst to check for the presence of a setup file on the hdd that only exists while windows xp setup is running. If this file exists, then boot from that hdd else boot the xp setup cd. This will ensure windows xp setup can survive the reboots and complete normally.

Beam me up outta here Scotty! Apologies if I didn't explain the original problem in a better way, but since I have found a solution and no-one else cares (apart from bphlpt, who I am happy to help) there's, no sense - as you put it , trying to explain again.

Thanks I have setup the PC's beforehand to boot cd-rom first so I can ring them up to put the CD in and know it will work. the problem removing bootfix.bin is after 1st reboot the CD will boot setup again and this will continue in a loop actually thank you for mentioning grub4dos. I have customised the menu.lst to allow for proper 100% unattended install so problem solved :-) I ring them to tell them to put the CD for that pc in its drive and reboot. most of the time I will be there anyway to stick the CD in and go do something else more productive. lots of purposes for a pc without monitor considering I can rdp and vnc into the machine... The "family scenario" given makes no sense. BIOS is set to ignore keyboard errors and nlite has option to enable rdp plus my custom script makes sure pc is accessible from my main pc so it does make sense. how does the family scenario not make sense. a lot of people live with families... anyway, like I said I have built a solution with grub4dos to fully automate this without 'press any key' I thought this would of been a useful feature to discuss and offer other peeps interested in fully unattended nlite installs but I guess not. :-(

I am using nlite for personal use. By 'alot of pcs' i mean single digit numbers and some of these pcs need reinstalled frequently. I am also not at my home all the time and need someone (old family member/completely computer illiterate) to stick the cd in (with me on the phone telling them what to do lol). Telling someone on the phone to stick a cd in the pc and leave it, vs Me: connect vga cable, Dummy: whats that? Me: the cable that goes to the screen Dummy: oh ok..wait a min (2mins later) Dummy: ok, i think thats it Me: ok, now connect the keyboard Dummy: mmm, wait 1 min (3 mins later) Dummy: ok Me: ok, turn the computer on, you need to press any key when it says that on the screen Dummy: ok, turning on Me: ok Dummy: Ok, it says press any key, but where is any key? Me: ... Me: just press d (for Dummy) Dummy: ok, i pressed d, now i see a windows picture (Dummy has not pressed it quick enough and has skipped cd boot) Me: eh ok, you will need to press it quicker next time, ok lets try again....find the reset switch on the front... (10mins later) Get my point?

I want the simplest possible unattended scenario for the user (dummy) The pc is only connected to power and ethernet. I want the user to be able to power on the machine, open the cd tray, put cd in, close and reboot. When my unattended cd completes it opens the cd tray and beeps to alert the user, who then removes the cd, closes the tray thus stopping the cd from being booted on reboot. There is no keyboard or monitor to wait for and press the 'any' key The hdd can be blank or have a previous xp install

Thanks jaclaz Looks like I would have to have a bootmanager check if the hdd was still in 'Windows Setup Mode' and bypass the CD in that case and boot CD in all other cases. No idea how to do this tho :S Can bootmanagers check existence of certains files on the hdd? If so I could try and detect a temp file/folder used while windows is still in setup mode.

Hello, I have a unattended windows cd made using nlite. I am trying to get rid of the press any key prompt to boot the cd but havent found a way to do this. If i use nlite to remove the prompt the cd will just loop through the setup every time the PC reboots. ** In the bios the cdrom drive must be set to boot first ** Is there a custom cd rom bootloader that will get around this annoying limitation, to allow true unattended installation with no user interaction whatsoever. (Hint: I have alot of pcs to auto install)