> What are people doing to get 64-bit XP installed?
> 
> As far as I have been able to see there has been nothing done in regards
> to unattended to take care of this.
>
Not sure about XP, but with the HP SmartStart x64 2003 Server installs, I have 
used the SmartStart CD to 
put the install image on the hard drive, then PXE boot to Unattended and have 
it generate the 
unattended.txt as usual. Modify Unattended so it copies the generated file over 
c:\unattended.txt and c:
\winnt.~bt\winnt.sif (or something similar?). Then reboot from the SmartStart 
installed hard drive. It 
works fine but the initial CD boot is annoying. You also have to modify the 
Media library so it looks for 
an amd64 directory as well as i386. And I added a flag that told Unattended not 
to bother copying the 
Windows source files for 64-bit installs.

For XP you'd probably have to let the standard Windows installer copy it's 
files, then boot into 
PXE/Unattended when it reboots to get into graphics mode?

For the 64 bit installs, the OS directory only needs to hold the three text 
files that the Media library 
looks for. You don't have to copy the CD in there. You can still copy drivers 
etc in as usual.

I let SmartStart generate and initialise the C: drive, and create any other 
partitions with scripts run by 
todo.pl after boot.

I did try to generate a windows bootable partition using parted etc, but didn't 
have much luck. If I could 
have done that I could have tar'd up the SmartStart generated C: drive once, 
and just dumped it on to the 
disk myself during the install. I tried a few variations. The stoppers were 
that I couldn't get my 
generated partitions to boot the Windows x64 installer, and the version of tar 
in unattended seemed to 
choke on filenames with '$' in them.

> I would hate to see xp64 and then Vista be the death of Unattended.
> 

People will always find a solution. I'd like to see Windows include a proper 
package manager. RedHat 
kickstart installs take about 5 minutes, but an equivalent unattended Windows 
install takes 3/4 of an hour 
on the same hardware. The hardware's the same. The software's equivalent. The 
difference can only be the 
(lack of) package manager? Not really a problem for actual installs, but it 
makes the testing and 
development process painful.


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