Greetings, all! I am on my way to a working automated install of Windows 7. I have got all of the OS installation via network automated but have not yet attempted to get the post-install todo.pl stuff working. I am posting my notes on how I got this to work for reference and comment, as I couldn't find a complete guide for getting this to work on the mailing list (or anywhere else). I borrow heavily from the following website, and extend my thanks to skaven for providing a sound starting point:
http://doomclaw.de/index.php/2009/08/18/installing-windows-7-with-a-pxe-boot-server/ Without further ado, here is the procedure. Pre-requisites: I'm assuming you already have an unattended environment set up, including the ability to pxe boot (dhcp, dns, etc). I'm also assuming you've got a samba server set up serving \\ntinstall\install as described in the normal unattended distribution and have copied the contents of the windows 7 setup disc to the os/win7 directory within your unattended distribution. First, we created a WinPE environment that gets loaded via pxe. This gives us a launchpad to start setup.exe. To do this, you will need access to a windows 7 computer running the same architecture (x86 or amd64) as your target machines. We follow skaven's guide at the above website for a lot of this. As instructed, download the WAIK and install it, then run the first script (remembering to modify architecture variable as needed). By default, this script outputs all the files you'll need to pxeboot WinPE into c:\tftp. As it is, when we pxeboot to this, it will dump us to a shell, but we want this to be automatic. To do this, we need to mount the image and make a small change. To mount the image, use the command "Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\tftp\Boot\winpe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\winpe_x86\mount". This mounts the image to c:\winpe_x86\mount (or wherever you specified with /MountDir). Edit c:\winpe_x86\mount\Windows\System32\startnet.cmd. There should be a single line consisting of 'wpeinit'. Add the following lines: net use z: \\ntinstall\install z: cd os\win7 setup.exe /unattend:\\ntinstall\install\unattended.xml and save the file. Now we need to update the image with this command, which unmounts it and updates it: "Dism /unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Commit". Now we can copy the contents of the tftp directory over to the server, as described in skaven's guide. You'll have to play around a bit with the naming and remap stuff on your tftp server to get pxe to find the correct image. I copied mine over to a folder called Boot at the main tftp directory, but still had to use skaven's remapping file, replacing 'windows/7/' with 'Boot/'. Also, his pxe config requires you to choose the image, so you'll want to edit your pxelinux.cfg/defualt to something akin to this: default 1 timeout 100 prompt 1 label 1 kernel Boot/startrom.0 Assuming you have the proper symlinks set up and get the remapping working, you should now have a pxeboot environment that starts the windows setup.exe with a given unattended.xml answer file (as sepcified with the /unattend: switch for setup.exe in the startnet.cmd file). Creating this answer file is going to be site specific, but I've got a couple notes on it. You'll be using the WAIK on your windows 7 computer again Load the install.wim image from your windows 7 setup disc, and perhaps load a sample answer file from c:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Samples. See the links at the bottom of this email for Microsoft's documentation on answer files. It will probably take you several installs to get a working answer file, but fortunately each install usually never took more than thirty minutes (for me, anyway). Here are my notes on building an answer file: Disks start at 0, partitions at 1. Disable UAC with Microsoft-Windows-LUA-Settings compoenent, setting "EnableLUA", value "false". A windows 7 install normally boots into the Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) welcome screen for its first boot. To avoid this, follow the page "Automate Windows Welcome" in the help files (which are invaluable to getting a working answer file). I could not get the built-in Administrator account to work, so i just created a new account with administrative privileges. Under Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Startup/FirstLogonCommands/SynchronousCommand you can specify a command to be run post installation, and I have verified that this will mount the \\ntinstall\install automatically, so here is where we'll want to hook into the unattended distribution to use todo.pl to automate the installation of all our other packages. I'm sure there are different ways of doing this post-install automation, but since we've already got a huge library of todo.pl-dependant scripts from our WinXP isntallations, I'm just sticking with this. Post back to the list if this works for you or if you find any problems. Jake Useful Links: skaven's guide: http://doomclaw.de/index.php/2009/08/18/installing-windows-7-with-a-pxe-boot-server/ building a WinPE .wim file (mount and unmount commands came from here): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744533%28WS.10%29.aspx customizing WinPE (autoinstall came from here): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744245%28WS.10%29.aspx answer file help: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799285%28WS.10%29.aspx ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list unattended-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
