Unattended and (legally) modified WinXP installations

Gatttsu

Gatttsu

Crush them! YA-HA!
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Has anyone ever attempted to make a modified WInXP installation CD before? I've been working on this for the past few hours after having messed up the first time a few weeks ago, and I'll admit, it's a pain in the ass like no other when it comes to this sort of thing.

I'm not asking for any help (yet) but I thought it'd be an interesting discussion to have with someone who has done this before successfully.

The current project I'm working on is an old PC I built for my younger brother a few years ago and I put in a SATA drive just to try something new, after many hours of dealing with new types of cables/driver configurations we finally got his pc up and running and he loved it. Now the problem: I'm having tons of trouble getting my old floppy drives/disks to function properly and it seems that floppies have been phased out, but that's where the WinXP CD wants to get the drivers from, so I had to do some research into this unattended install stuff. I made the special CD once and a few typos kept it from functioning properly (just a misplaced quotation mark ["] messed the entire disc up), so I picked the project back up this morning while I was bored and fixed my typos only to come across files missing from the install process.

Frustrated, I went back over the entire guide to this process I found on PCStats and tried a few more things to fix my errors, my recent attempt is burning as I type this (blasted CD-RWs take forever to wipe/burn), the guide actually suggested that I use CD-RWs if I've never done this before so I can redo it until I get it just right, kinda wish I'd taken that advice about two discs ago XD.

This whole process I went through is supposed to fully automate an entire WinXP installation and even install the SATA/RAID drivers required to make this particular drive work, should be interesting once I get this process down, I could make a ton of useful discs for different applications in installations. It says you could even use this method to install any other drivers for your PC in the automated process, I may make a special disc for later when I want to do my reformat every so often so I don't have to sit around all day watching the process and throwing in disc after disc of drivers.
 
If you're dealing with funky installs, I would make an image the stable OS and then just re-image any future installs with the known good baseline (the stable OS). Depending on the backup medium you choose, you'll be able to build the your system, applications included, and restore at will. Ghost is a great application if you can get your hands on it. If not, Ghost 4 Unix (g4u) will do almost everything you need for free. ;)

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Best of luck.
 
Where is it telling you that it needs a floppy disk?

I haven't done unattended installs since Win2k server, but the installer isn't terribly different. You had that... what was it... unattend.ini?

As for modding - I've done some slipstreams to include SP1 and SP2 but drivers, I dunno. We have a custom rebuild disc... I can ask our tech services team how they did it.
 
It's not so much that I'm having trouble with this process, I just wanted to see if anyone else who has done it found it to be such a pain in the ass XD

After 6 hours of trial and error yesterday when I made my OP, I said screw it and took a break for a day. This whole process isn't all that different than slipstreaming SP1/2 into WinXP, it just has a few extra steps and some notepad coding. If you mess up one line, it loves to point it out when you try to use the disc, I happen to get the same errors each time:

"Line 21833 (or 21837) of file winnt.sif is invalid" - means I probably have a typo or I misdirected a driver path again.

"File xxxxxxx.sys (driver filename) is missing or damaged." - pretty obvious, I put in the wrong name in the sif file again XD. I've only had this error twice because I forgot which driver I was actually using in that trial.


This whole process is enough to make me want to rip my hair out, but it really amuses me to see how many times I can keep making the same clumsy mistakes, I'm getting a good laugh out of this at the very least ^^.
 
I would think your looking for slipstreaming. Creating a disc with updates, drivers etc....

Creating an answer file for unattended install is probably just as much work as slapping in a floppy for your disks. Unattended install is mostly for the corporate environment, where you need to install the same install on a set of sometimes hundreds of computers all configured the same way. In that situation the headache is very worth it.
 
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Gatttsu said:
It's not so much that I'm having trouble with this process, I just wanted to see if anyone else who has done it found it to be such a pain in the ass XD
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Oh lord no. The first image I built worked. But then again I wasn't playing with drivers, just patches. Do the drivers have built-in dependancies on other files in the driver pack?
 
I wish this was as easy as slipstreaming in service packs, this actually requires adding extra files and making CABs, then telling Windows where to look for them on the new disc.

So far I've narrowed my mistakes down to just using the wrong driver according to the troubleshooting guide, I've finally stopped making little typo errors, and I've remembered to add my correct files/paths. I just wish I could remember what driver this blasted drive needed, I recall going through several sets because the manufacturer pretty much has no clue what driver I want for which drive series.

This is the absolute last time I ever build with SATA/RAID, floppies don't exist anymore and that's the only place the xp setup will accept the third party driver from ><. Even if I had a decent set of floppies to make a disk with, my floppy drive doesn't function properly anymore.

If only this was so easy as the slipstreaming, I'd have had it done a month ago ; ;
 
CmdrFly said:
Where is it telling you that it needs a floppy disk?
Click to expand...
It's right after you start booting off the install CD, when it's beginning to install drivers. It says something like "Press F2 (or is it F3?) to install a 3rd party RAID or SCSI driver" and your only option for installing it at that point is through the floppy drive.

I've done the process before, and it is a major pain in the ass. It's been a couple years though, so I honestly couldn't do it again without looking everything up all over.
 
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1703&page=1

This is the guide I've been following, I followed it to the letter, I'm just missing the proper driver according to the troubleshooting section since I've eliminated all the other problems, I just can't remember which driver is the right one, they give me a billion driver options on the drive model I'm using. I'm only left with the "unrecognized hard drive" error in the windows installation, so I have to be using the wrong driver set, I just have to keep changing which one I use until it finally accepts it.

Edit: I've already added SP1/2 to this disc image beforehand, this is the only hurdle left before I can finally get rid of this troublesome pc. I have to go through all this trouble because the people I'm giving the pc to are computer illiterate ><
 
Stouter said:
It's right after you start booting off the install CD, when it's beginning to install drivers. It says something like "Press F2 (or is it F3?) to install a 3rd party RAID or SCSI driver" and your only option for installing it at that point is through the floppy drive.

I've done the process before, and it is a major pain in the ass. It's been a couple years though, so I honestly couldn't do it again without looking everything up all over.
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F6. But recent mobos, I think any of the ones that support booting from a USB slot, overcome this need for a floppy drive. I've heard of people leaving their SCSI drivers on a jumpdrive and having the installer load them from there.
 
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