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Automating Win 2k installs

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Windows

2000–the latest release of Microsoft’s "ground-up" baby, Win

NT, is finally out. It comes in four versions: Professional, Server,

Advanced Server, and the yet-to-be-released Datacenter Server. Windows 2000

Professional is the equivalent of Win NT 4 Workstation, meant for desktop

use. It’s pretty good as a home machine and most games run properly.

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Installing Windows 2000

Professional is pretty simple. The install process is similar to Win NT

installation. When installing off the bootable CD-ROM, the first part is a

text-based installation that copies appropriate files to the hard disk and

lets you manage your partitions, etc. After a reboot, the GUI install starts

and detects your machine’s hardware, lets you assign machine names and

network connections, and the time and time zone. After this, it installs and

registers a lot of files and components by itself. After a final restart,

you’re ready to start using the OS. However, unlike Win 9x and NT

installations, there is apparently no option for a custom installation. So

you’ll find things such as Accessibility options, Games, Miscellaneous

Sound Schemes, etc, installed and taking up valuable disk space.

In this article we’ll show

how to do a custom installation from scratch and how to get rid of installed

programs if you’ve already set them up.

Scratch Custom install

Windows 2000

Professional uses either WINNT.SIF or UNATTEND.TXT to determine how to

install itself. The contents of both the files are same. The difference lies

in the original medium from where the install starts. When the installation

is taking place from the CD-ROM, the WINNT.SIF file is picked up. However,

if the installation is taking place over a network, UNATTEND.TXT is used.

The CD-ROM contains a default WINNT.SIF file, but we’ll generate a

completely new one to suit our needs.

To set up an answer file (as

these files are known), we’ll use a tool provided on the install CD

itself. It’s available in \SUPPORT\TOOLS\DEPLOY. CAB. Extract the contents

of the CAB file into a temporary folder on your hard disk (WinZip 7 or above

can open CAB files directly) and run SETUPMGR.EXE.

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