Creating an Unattended Windows XP CD

[tamarelle]

I gave it up.

coldnt get it to work at all

[Mark_Venture]

Tamarelle,

I know you were having problems with getting the "text mode" setup drivers for your RAID controller to load without having to press F6 and feed it a floppy..

Did you ever get that working?

What else did you have problems with? or did the RAID stuff just stop you cold?

You want some help to try again?

[tamarelle]

Originally posted by Mark_Venture
Tamarelle,

I know you were having problems with getting the "text mode" setup drivers for your RAID controller to load without having to press F6 and feed it a floppy..

Did you ever get that working?

What else did you have problems with? or did the RAID stuff just stop you cold?

You want some help to try again?

any help would be great

I dont even remember how to start really

[iMogal]

I had it working with the old setup... but I have a completely revamped computer... I have to start from scratch... Once SP2 become official, I will probly try again...

I find that XP has been good for stability, even after a million installs - uninstalls of crap... I've gotten to the point that I do not like to install the OS anymore (at one time I enjoyed it :eek: )

So I find that this project is worth its wieght when completed. JMO
as long as I remember to back everything up...

I'm also gunna drop the batch file for the newer 'Progress Window' as per RunOnceEx.cmd

[iMogal]

Originally posted by tamarelle
any help would be great

I dont even remember how to start really

Tamarelle, I came accross this maybe it can help?

[tamarelle]

Originally posted by iMogal
Tamarelle, I came accross this maybe it can help?

actually Imogal it was very nice of you to find that but I don't think it can help.

The instructions on the page you directed me to are for a sis controller or something and I have no idea what hardware id to use for the 3Com controller. Or is it the fastrk controller?

It looks to me like another few weeks of frustration eek! Dare I?

Plus I don't think that that source is for creating a CD. He refers to the e drive and I don't even have an e drive.

Tam

[zsaz1029]

Originally posted by tamarelle
actually Imogal it was very nice of you to find that but I don't think it can help.

The instructions on the page you directed me to are for a sis controller or something and I have no idea what hardware id to use for the 3Com controller. Or is it the fastrk controller?

Tam

The website says the following near the end of the page:

A collection of information needed for TXTSETUP.SIF for certain drivers can be found HERE.

The link on the word here is for a CAB file. Contained within are examples of what he's talking about for various drivers, including a fasttrak example.

Here's what he has for fasttrk:

[tamarelle]

okay you guys started this so now I need your help.

I was perfectly content to not bother with this again but now here I am trying to create an unattended windows CD.

Right now here is my problem. I am trying to slipstream hotfixes into windows.

This is where I am confused, following are the instructions:

"Expand the hotfix to a unique temporary location. For example, to expand the files to a folder named samplefolder, type the following:
E:\i386\svcpack\Qnnnnnn /X E:\samplefolder

Copy the catalog files (.cat) and hotfix binary files (such as .exe, .dll, .sys), as follows:
Copy Qnnnnnn.cat to the E:\i386\svcpack folder. If you will be deploying multiple hotfixes together, make sure that you copy all catalog files from each of the hotfixes to be deployed. Each hotfix has a unique catalog file that you must copy in the Qnnnnnn.cat format.
If any binary files exist in multiple packages, keep only the file with the highest version number.
Delete any binary files to be replaced in the i386 folder (typically you can identify these files in the shared folder by the underscore [_] at the end of each file name).
Copy the hotfix binary files into the i386 folder."


Okay I extracted my first hotfix into a folder called samplefolder as instructed. here is a picture of what I am doing.


You will see that there are copies of dll files but I need help to know what they mean when they say I put BINARY files in the 386 folder as I don't know what a binary file IS. There are also two copies of the same dll file but even though their version is the same one is bigger. Do I put them both in? I am lost here. I put the cat file I found in one of the svcpack folder but I dont know where to put the rest of this stuff.

Any help would be appreciated.

Tam

[Mark_Venture]

While I did slip stream SP1, I didn't slip stream the individual hot fixes. I have the Hot Fixes and updates being installed one at a time post install with via batch file.

[tamarelle]

I am making progress but alas I cannot boot.

Mark I see you have licked the F6 problem. I am not sure but I am getting closer.

I actually have the installation loading my FastTrk Raid files at installation and windows sees and accepts them and the installation goes flawlessly.

However, when the system tries its first boot after installation it crashes to desktop. No BSOD the computer just reboots.

I am trying to install windows server to a 5 gig partition at the tail end of my hard drive (raid) which is 240 gigs. Could this be the problem? I know that in many cases it is not advisable to install a system partition too far back and this is as far back as you can get as 235 gigs separate my mbr from this partition.

Maybe I am installing too much stuff during the installation. The Direct X and hotfixes and even my intel inf drivers are all being installed. The Direct X and Intel drivers are not silent and they do ask for a reboot, I just cancel the reboot obviously.

I am hesitant to try to install on my primary hard drive until I know if trying to install on this partition I am using on the tail of the hard drives could be the factor.

Anyone?

Cheers

Tam

[T-Hammer]

I Am Going To Start This Project For Myself.

My Goal Is To Make A Windows XP Pro That automatically installs all of the pre SP2 updates, hotfixes, as many raid drivers as possible, and some applications. I will begin within the next week. You guys up for helping me if i run into problems?
Thanx In Advance

[FB]

Originally posted by T-Hammer
I Am Going To Start This Project For Myself.

My Goal Is To Make A Windows XP Pro That automatically installs all of the pre SP2 updates, hotfixes, as many raid drivers as possible, and some applications. I will begin within the next week. You guys up for helping me if i run into problems?
Thanx In Advance

i can try

[Mark_Venture]

Originally posted by tamarelle
...Mark I see you have licked the F6 problem. I am not sure but I am getting closer.

I actually have the installation loading my FastTrk Raid files at installation and windows sees and accepts them and the installation goes flawlessly.

Ah, so does that mean you did get the Raid drivers to load as part of the CD/install part rather than pressing F6 and feeding the diskette?

Originally posted by tamarelle
However, when the system tries its first boot after installation it crashes to desktop. No BSOD the computer just reboots.

You mentioned before about slip streaming some of the hot fixes... is that how you are applying them? or are you doing the BAT file (or .cmd file) thing? If you tried slip streaming them too, that might be part of this problem.

Originally posted by tamarelle
...I am trying to install windows server to a 5 gig partition at the tail end of my hard drive (raid) which is 240 gigs. Could this be the problem? I know that in many cases it is not advisable to install a system partition too far back and this is as far back as you can get as 235 gigs separate my mbr from this partition.

I am not sure where the limit is. The only limit I remember was for legacy OS which was 1024 cylinders or first 8gig... But I have WinXP partitions installed past that, but within the first 30 gigs

Originally posted by tamarelle
...Maybe I am installing too much stuff during the installation. The Direct X and hotfixes and even my intel inf drivers are all being installed. The Direct X and Intel drivers are not silent and they do ask for a reboot, I just cancel the reboot obviously.

I install the intel inf drivers (but as part of the WinNT.SIF stuff), Direct X, hot fixes, MSN messenger, etc without problems, so "too much" should not be a big deal.. I've seen people posting of installing a whole bunch more.

Originally posted by tamarelle
...I am hesitant to try to install on my primary hard drive until I know if trying to install on this partition I am using on the tail of the hard drives could be the factor.

VMWare or VirtualPC are good for this. If you don't have either, but you have a spare hard drive, do what I did for testing... I disconnected the cable from my primary drives, and hooked it up to a spare drive to test the install.... when done, or errors, swap the cables back.. Its a pain, but better than taking a chance of messing up your regular/everyday drive.

[tamarelle]

Mark thank you for answering

I don't have to press F6 at all. It installs the drivers without an error message, but I have noticed when it copies the files to install right after formatting the hard drive, it installs the drivers for the RAID TWICE. In other words I see fasttrk2k.sys twice, etc, when it shows the files being loaded.

the installation goes flawlessly but when its time for the OS to boot the computer reboots instead.

I tried it on my primary hard drive.

I do have microsoft virtual machine installed and it helps but alas you cannot test raid drivers on it.

I suspect I messed up the txtsetup.sif file. The instructions were to put the references to my raid just before the "invisible" end mark of each section but since its invisible I just put the references anyplace and maybe that is the problem.

Would you mind sending me your txtsetup.sif file?

thank you

Tamara

[Mark_Venture]

Originally posted by tamarelle
I suspect I messed up the txtsetup.sif file. The instructions were to put the references to my raid just before the "invisible" end mark of each section but since its invisible I just put the references anyplace and maybe that is the problem.

hmmmm... The link I posted earlier that I followed to get the text mode Raid drivers supported doesn't mention that... Which instructions did you follow?

Originally posted by tamarelle
Would you mind sending me your txtsetup.sif file?

I'm still using the same txtsetup.sif that is in the Edited_Files1.zip posted earlier in this thread (on this page... Creating an Unattended Windows XP CD see my post at 09-13-2003 01:38 PM )

Keep in mind, I am using USA WinXP Pro Corporate with SP1 slip streamed... so if you are using a different language version it might be slightly different.

If you are using the instructions I am, and I posted the link to, post BOTH your original and edited i386\hivesys.inf and i386\txtsetup.sif files and I'll take a look.