I just thought there might be a package, like MS seems to have a Win7 unattended install pack now. If Hannah needs to assist with any of it; I may as well sweet talk her into the whole thing this time, and try to get a full functioning unattended for XP together later. I've got to install XP drivers from the factory disk afterwards anyway, and hope they work.
This ZT Systems, for a cheapo computer Made In USA, has good support.Their Hindu technicians speak English better than I do, and either know their stuff, or look it up, and answer the phone in 3 or 4 minutes average.
MS, and many another huge corporation, isn't half that good.I remember one MS tech, named Govinda; or maybe it was Chrishna; when I asked him a technical point, he said, Sir, for certain, that is the 64 million dollar magic question! I understood perfectly, PC's are actually magic boxes, and; who knows why they sometimes work and sometimes don't.
Probably only Be ellza bub knows, he invented them, after all, didn't he?I think I want the unattended install all on a CD or DVD, in case the internal hard drive is down.
When I have swappable hard drives, that will be a different story. Why even bother with attended or unattended install then?Just keep Windows XP Pro on a partition of all drives, and image, your favorite word, the operating system from 1 drive to the other drive; that needs XP on it, right?
Indigo L On 11/29/2011 11:41 PM, Chris Belle wrote:
Because that's just how it works. YOu could try using nlite, but I've had issues with that thing. Best thing for you to do is takesome time, and focus on learning to do it if you really want to. There are a couple of ways, my favorite way is doing an unattended install from the hard-drive, which gives you the most options, because you can format and partition before hand, and you get interactive install messages first in dos until the installer reboots, and then with narrator if you picked the f2 option or is it f1, I forget, but the windows way will wipe out everything and give you one big partition. i don't like that because I like to leave my email, and other data, project folders, etc in tact on another partition or drive and have a small system drive. I start out with a fat32 drive so I can see everything, and use a bootable flopy, or thumb-drive. Bootable cds are ok, but don't give you the flexibility of a dynamic install so you can change something on the fly if you want, say you want to load an ntfs driver to see ntfs drives, or cdrom drivers, or smartdrv, or what ever. I don't have time to go through all this right now, but when things slow down, and you really want to learn this stuff, I'll do my best to help you. In the mean time, try nlite, and see if it gives you joy for a windows only turn key least fuss and muss way of doing it. Not being a smart ass or anything, but as you know, rewards come to those who learn the tools, some times there's no other way around it. Like programming for instance. I'm an idiot with that stuff, tom can do in his sleep or in one afternoon what took me weeks to do, but his brain works that way. Mine doesn't. So it's lots of elbowgrease, and trial and error. I didn't get my first windows install exactly right the first time either. and it's not the same for all systems, because depending on how your bios is set, whether ahci mode is on or off, whether you need text mode drivers for certain things which can hang up your system, all that can stop the show. I remember on an old machine, when the ata133 promise controler hung me up, and I had to switch to the standard ata ports for windows to go in because of course, I couldn't do the f6 text mode screen, and some of the first sata controlers were a bitch because they didn't immulate ide mode in a way xp liked so guess what, drivers again. the unattended file gives you some control over that stuff, but nlite can make these low level tasks easier, but unless he's fived it, I had some issue with the boot part of the cd, can't remember what I did, I think I had to go get them from microsoft or some such, I've slept since then. Good luck with it all, I'll be glad to send you my install files, but you'll need to start with xp on the hd, or it might work from a usb drive, and Hanah could help you through the first part where dos usually would talk if you don't have the serial port working on your machine, you might need to see if it's disabled in the bios and if you've got the right kind of pin out for it, remember there are two kinds. At 06:28 PM 11/29/2011, you wrote:I just listened to a podcast on an unattended install for XP Pro, and I'd have to grab a file from Windows and a file from the web, or somewhere else, and somehow get them all in a folder, and burn a bootable CD with Nero? I don't even use Nero any more. Surely there's a pack somewhere with all that's required all together in a single folder, at least the part outside the Windows XP install disk, so I could just plunk the added part in the folder with XP install, burn it to a bootable Cd, and be ready to go? Why do we need to assemble this thing from parts, like building your own car from parts you bought in the auto parts store. Thanks for advice, Indigo LFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web design
