Sunday, June 21, 2009

Unattended Windows XP installation

Unattended Windows XP installation will speed up the installation process without answering dialogs prompted by Windows XP installation service.  It save times waiting for the dialog prompt.  After the installation finish, you have a ready Windows XP instance.  You may walk away when installing.  All dialog prompts’ answer are provided by a unattended answer file.

The answer file in .ini text file.  However, there is a tool to help you generate the answer file:

  1. Extract setupmgr.exe from Windows XP installation CD in folder \support\tools\deploy.cab
  2. Run setupmgr.exe and follow the screen instruction to generate the answer file.

Once the answer file is generated, you may install Windows XP via command line installation:

d:\> i386\winnt32.exe /syspart:c: /makelocalsource /unattend:answer.txt

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